by C. J. Lyons
Devon ignored the urine—he’d dealt with much worse than a little piss in his time—and gently lifted the boy. He was burning up. And his lips and tongue were dry, but he wasn’t sweating at all.
Early signs of heat stroke. “Esme.” He forced himself to keep his voice calm as the other children watched with a strange mixture of curiosity and feigned indifference. “Go get Randolph’s mom or grandparents. Ask them to meet me in the exam room across the hall, please.”
She bobbed her head and sped away. Devon sighed, shifting Randolph’s weight in his arms, and carried the boy away from the crowd of worried parents to the room they’d set up with medical equipment from Daniel’s stockpile.
As he settled the six-year-old onto the bed and arranged a cooling blanket over him, Devon wondered yet again at Daniel’s prescience. How much did he know about the potential for a prion-induced plague? Or had it been simple global paranoia that had led Daniel to hoard state-of-the-art medical equipment?
He was applying the monitor leads to Randolph when the door flew open and Veronica ran in, an older couple on her heels.
“Randolph,” she cried out, rushing to his bedside and throwing her arms around him. “Wake up, sweetie. Come back to Momma.” She turned her face to Devon. “He’s burning up.” Her tone was accusatory, as if it was Devon’s fault that invisible proteins had chewed apart Randolph’s thermoregulatory system.
“I started cooling him, but I think he’ll need an IV,” Devon said. He had no idea how to start an IV, and from the terrified look on her face, neither did Randolph’s mother. Why should she? Before yesterday she’d been a waitress at her parents’ restaurant, serving tea and dumplings.
The patter of feet distracted him. Esme breezed in, tugging Louise behind her. “I found Dr. Louise!”
“Good girl,” Devon said. “How about if you take Randolph’s grandparents out so Dr. Louise has room to work?”
Esme nodded and reached a hand to each of the older couple who had remained shock-still at the doorway since their arrival. Randolph’s mother nodded her agreement, and they allowed Esme to lead them from the room. Louise moved past Devon to examine her patient while Devon closed the door and leaned against it.
Louise managed somehow to be both efficient and reassuring as she separated Randolph from his mother, finished undressing the boy, began an IV—Veronica gasped at the needle, but to Devon’s relief didn’t faint or scream—and arranged a wireless EEG cap over Randolph’s head. Finally, she turned to the monitor, nodding at what she saw in the neon tracings. “Everything looks good,” she told the mother. “I think with a little fluid, he’ll be fine.”
“When will he wake up?” she asked, stroking Randolph’s arm.
“In his own good time. But with this,” Louise gestured to the monitors measuring the boy’s vital signs in brilliant neon, “we can make sure he doesn’t get into any more difficulty.”
Devon pushed a stool over to Veronica, who sank onto it, bowing her head over her son’s still body. He gestured to Louise, and she joined him outside in the empty hallway, leaving the door open so she could keep an eye on her patient.
“I think we should have all the children wearing wireless EEG monitors,” she said. “I can track them from my tablet, see if there’s a way to warn when they’re going into a fugue.”
“We’ve got plenty of them. Daniel saw to that,” Devon replied. “Speaking of Daniel—”
“I’m sorry. He died shortly after—” Her tone softened as if trying to ease the blow, but as far as Devon was concerned, Daniel’s death was one less complication in his life. As long as they’d gotten what they needed from the bastard.
“What did Angela learn? Did he tell her about the cure?”
“No. He gave her the formula for the PXA reversal agent and showed her the woman behind the fatal insomnia. Francesca Lazaretto.”
“Lazaretto?”
She frowned. “You don’t sound surprised.”
“I’m not.” He explained about Tommaso’s research, the experiments he had kept hidden from Francesca. “He said the key to spreading the prions came from Patient Zero. And that Francesca has a potential cure but needs Patient Zero to implement it.”
He placed his palms on Louise’s shoulders and lowered his voice, not wanting to risk his words carrying to Randolph’s mother. He couldn’t give these people false hope, not after everything they’d been through. “Don’t you see, Louise? All we need to do is find this Patient Zero and trade him to the Lazarettos for the cure. We can save the children—Angela, too.”
To his surprise, Louise’s face filled with dismay. “No, Devon. We can’t do that.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because Angie is Patient Zero.”
Chapter 29
AFTER RYDER’S PRONOUNCEMENT of where they could find Lazaretto, Grey and Tyrone exchanged glances. Then both men burst out laughing. “He’s desperate,” Tyrone said. “Trying to deflect us.”
“You really think we don’t know Tommaso is dead?” Grey told Ryder. “We don’t care where his body is. It’s his research we want.”
“Not the research he was doing with Dr. Mehta at Good Samaritan,” Tyrone added as Ryder opened his mouth, ready to bait them with another red herring. He turned back to Grey. “Devon Price. That’s the name he gave up to you. He’s Leo Kingston’s half-brother.”
Grey nodded at that, moved away from the computer to the worktable where he unrolled the set of plans Tyrone had had earlier. They didn’t try to hide it from Ryder. They were that confident he wouldn’t survive to warn anyone. Grey leafed through the schematics of Good Samaritan’s various wings, finally finding what he wanted: the map of the underground tunnels nearest the hospital.
“Leo Kingston used the tunnels to hide his killing spree. If Tommaso was working with him, hiding his extracurricular research from Mother, he probably continued his work down there.” Grey drummed his fingers against the map. “But where?”
“More important,” Tyrone said, leaning his back against the table to scrutinize Ryder while Grey poured over the schematics, “is that it’s also the perfect place to hide our stolen cohort. Price must be involved.”
Ryder kept his face blank, not totally following their conversation but also understanding that any questions he asked might reveal more than he wanted.
“When we’d learned Tommaso had gone radio silent, our first priority was to secure his cohort, like we did in West Virginia,” Tyrone continued.
Cohort. He meant the kids infected with the prions, Ryder realized.
“Taking out the housing project where they all lived would have been easy,” Tyrone said. “A gas leak, a spark, a few fire exits barricaded, problem solved.”
“Almost a thousand people live in the Kingston Tower,” Ryder protested.
Grey chuckled, still peering at the map, while Tyrone shrugged his indifference. “But when we arrived last night, we found someone had already created a disaster there. Place was evacuated. And our cohort mysteriously vanished. Not among the people sheltering at St. Timothy’s or at the hospital or the school. Just,” he snapped his fingers, “gone. How do you think that could happen, Detective?”
“Stop playing with him,” Grey said. “Devon Price is the key. He controls the tunnels—they were built as an emergency evacuation for the state government. Hiding twenty-some families down there would be easy.”
“That’s the problem. It’ll be just as easy for him to know we’re coming.” Tyrone frowned, then thought for a moment, his gaze locked on Ryder. “Why is Price involved, anyway? How did he know about the cohort? Why is he working with Angela Rossi?”
“She’s the one who killed Leo,” Grey answered. “With Price’s help. They must be friends.”
More to it than that, Ryder thought, keeping his face as neutral as possible. It was clear they didn’t know that one of the children in their cohort was Price’s daughter. Good thing Esme had her mother’s last name.
Tyrone’s
frown deepened. “What was Tommaso thinking, trying to circumvent Mother’s orders, doing his own research? He must have tipped Rossi somehow.”
“Price is a criminal. Perhaps when regular law enforcement,” Grey smirked at Ryder, “couldn’t help, she turned to him?”
“Maybe.” Tyrone didn’t sound satisfied, but he nodded. “Maybe. In any case, seems like we have all we need from the good detective.” He jerked his chin at the man guarding Ryder. “Put him back in the cage.”
“Wait,” Ryder called, trying to stall for time. “What are you going to do with Rossi?”
Tyrone favored him with a smug half smile. “Don’t worry. Your doctor friend is very precious to us. In fact, she’s the only reason why you’re still alive.”
<<<>>>
DEVON STARED AT Louise in dismay. “Rossi? No. She can’t be Patient Zero. Tommaso and Leo were infecting women and killing them with the prions months before Rossi had any symptoms.”
“I know. She wasn’t the first patient to show any symptoms. Which means—”
“She’s the cause of the disease. Somehow they used her to create it?” He looked past her through the open doorway to Randolph’s still form. “How? I mean—she didn’t, she couldn’t have known.”
“Of course she didn’t. And we’re still not sure. But while I was busy here, Geoff started correlating all the patient data you uploaded. He thinks the children were infected during a public health lead screening. One of the few commonalities of all of their patient histories is that their parents reported that they were told that they had above-average lead levels, and they received a dose of chelation from a public health nurse making home visits.”
“Chelation?”
“A treatment for lead poisoning. But outpatient treatment takes the form of an oral medication. Not an injection. And not by a public health nurse.”
“And, I’m guessing, there’s no home visit program?”
“None that I could find a record of. Whatever those kids received in that shot, good bet it was Tommaso’s prion inoculation. What I can’t figure is what he did to actually make it so easily transmissible. Usually, prions require direct contact with brain tissue. And it takes years before any symptoms show up.”
“His research mentioned something about using a virus to pass the blood-brain barrier. And DNA splicing?”
“Damn CRISPR-Cas9. Despite all the good it can do, that’s one genie that maybe should have stayed locked in a bottle.”
“Right, the gene-editing stuff that’s been in the news. I thought we were years away from using it on humans.”
“Any legitimate research lab is. Clearly, Almanac doesn’t mind rushing to human trials.”
Devon remembered Tommaso’s revenue-generating idea of infecting an entire school to harvest more genetic material and create more Vessels. “How do we stop it? If it’s not the hereditary fatal insomnia and the kids have this artificial DNA they’ve been infected with, we can make antibodies or a vaccine or something, right?”
She frowned. “There are a number of techniques that might be used—including using a variation on the CRISPR-Cas9 itself. But a vaccine would be able to only prevent the original prion infection. Once they’re already infected, the damage is done.”
“It’s irreversible?” No. He couldn’t accept that. There had to be a way to fight this. Just because Almanac and Tommaso’s people had the science and the wealth and the resources to create this monster and set it loose on the world, that didn’t mean he was ever going to give up. Not on Angela. Not on Esme. Not on any of the children.
In the past, he’d always fought his own battles. Often as not, he’d found success in walking away, letting the other guy think he’d won. Never realizing that true victory came in living longer and better.
At least that’s what he used to think. But this fight? He didn’t have the luxury of walking away.
Randolph’s mother looked up at him from across the hall. Too many people had placed their trust in him. He couldn’t give up. This fight was to the death.
One way or the other. Only question was: whose?
Chapter 30
FRANCESCA SPENT THE rest of the night preparing to defend her people. Marco, poor, small-minded Marco, with his profit/loss statements and misguided belief that money could buy him power. He had no clue.
True power, real power, lasting power came not from money but from loyalty. And her people were more than loyal, they were devoted.
She started with the lab, the one building on the island with any real security. It wasn’t designed to defend against armed attackers, rather to protect their work and keep it contained. But, if need be, she could turn its defenses into offensive weapons, use the lab as a trap, not unlike the pits her ancestors used to dig and line with poison-tipped pikes.
Poison. Yes, the perfect way to dispatch Marco’s men. After all, now that they were here on her island, they would need to eat her food. She stopped by the kitchen and had a quick word with the cook. It had been decades since the family had to make use of homespun poisons, but the cook had been trained in more than simple culinary skills. Like everyone on the island, the elders passed their knowledge down to the youngest, their apprenticeships beginning as soon as they were able to walk and talk.
With such shortened life-spans, they had no choice but to accelerate each subsequent generation’s education. Francesca herself had begun the tedious work of sequencing DNA when she was only nine. She knew little of art or literature or anything except the magical mysteries of the body’s building blocks, but before most “normal” children were ready for college, she was already performing intricate experiments far beyond all but the most advanced leaders in her field. No publications or degrees, not for a Lazaretto. No, their reward was in advancing the family, creating new and novel ways to use their gifts and cement the family’s power.
She left the kitchen and walked along the worn, stone corridor of the monastery that served as living quarters for the afflicted, ranging from four years old to sixty-three, all suffering the ravages of the Scourge. Once she dealt with Marco’s initial squadron of muscle, he would no doubt retaliate. And the island had no conventional weapons. They would need to be secured from the outside world. In the meantime, once Marco’s men were dead, she could make use of their guns to arm her own men.
Then she realized. She had a far superior weapon at her disposal: family.
Each of Marco’s guards would have relatives here. If she could persuade them to side with her...maybe she wouldn’t kill them. Not just yet.
She climbed the tower steps to her office at the top and called Tyrone. “Have you completed your work?”
His hesitation was answer enough. “No, but soon. We haven’t found Angela yet but have a strong lead.”
“Tommaso’s research?” Defeating Marco was impossible until she completed Tommaso’s work. Without it, she’d never convince the other family leaders to follow her instead of Marco.
“I think we will retrieve them both together.”
“Time is of the essence.” She told him about Marco and his deadline. “We’ll need reinforcements, weapons.” Luckily, Michael and Tyrone were worth at least a dozen of Marco’s men. Although neither son had any affinity for the sciences, not like their brother Tommaso, they had definitely inherited Francesca’s cunning.
Tyrone thought for a moment. “We have a man who can lead us to both Angela and Tommaso’s research, given the right incentive. If things go as planned, we’ll be headed home by morning.”
She calculated the time difference—they were six hours behind—and the travel time necessary for a surreptitious return to the island. “Which means you’ll be here by the twenty-eighth.” She’d allow Marco’s men to live until then, lull him into thinking he’d won. Perfect. “Yes, that will be acceptable. But do not fail me, Tyrone. Everything depends on this.”
“On my life, Mother. We will prevail.”
<<<>>>
FLYNN LED ME through the
maze of tunnels. “Can’t take the straight path, because it leads through the section where the Royales left booby traps to guard their drug stash,” she told me as we zigzagged through the corridors. “Unless you want to climb up to the catwalks?” Her voice upticked as she glanced into the shadows above us where pipes gurgled. “Those can get us there faster.”
I knew the catwalks were Flynn’s preferred method of traversing the tunnels. “You can go anywhere on them?”
“Pretty much. Each of the various sections of rooms is self-contained, but you still need some way to not only reach the pipes and electrical conduits and all but also to reach an area if it’s sealed off, like if there’s a fire or something.”
“Wait. How does that work?” I hadn’t spotted any hatches in the ceilings of the vault-like rooms in the modular sections.
“Guys who designed this were pretty slick. There are crawl spaces between some of the walls for the plumbing and electricity and air handlers. I checked a few of those, and there’s access panels into rooms, usually hidden behind the backs of cabinets and vanities.”
“Like a plumbing chase in a regular building.”
“Right.”
I stopped and craned my neck to search the darkness above us. “If someone finds us down here, how do we protect from an attack from above?”
To my surprise, she smiled. “My thoughts exactly. Don’t worry, doc. No one can get up there except me. Not without getting themselves killed for their trouble.”
“You booby-trapped access to the catwalks?” Not for the first time, I realized that Flynn, in her own warped way, was a kind of genius. I was glad she was on our side.
We reached another of Devon’s safe zones and stopped while Flynn unlocked the doors. This one must not have been monitored, because she didn’t wave to anyone before we crossed inside and locked the door behind us. I hated the way all the doors in this place closed with such definitive thuds—not unlike I imagined the door of a prison cell would.
