This Vicious Cure

by Emily Suvada

  “Yeah,” I murmur. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  I step to the side as a man wheels another cart down the hallway past us. This one looks like it’s loaded with empty metal cylinders—the kind I used to make bullets in the cabin.

  “Wait,” I say, taking in the man’s T-shirt and casual clothes. “Is that a civilian? Why are they on the same level as the labs? And why are they making bullets?”

  “Things aren’t great here,” Leoben says. “I’ll show you.”

  I follow him down the hallway to a wide, echoing open space that looks like it might have once been a cafeteria. It’s filled with tables and chairs packed full of civilians in blue Cartaxus clothing. The crossed-antlers logo glows from massive video screens around the room. There are people talking in low murmurs, sitting at tables piled high with metal and pieces of equipment. A chill rolls through me as I look around. These people are all making weapons.

  There are piles of guns and ammunition. One table looks like it’s covered with parts for grenades. But these are Cartaxus civilians—not their soldiers. These are the people who’ve spent the last two years in safety. They’re supposed to be in the beautiful levels of a bunker, with cafés, gyms, and parks to walk through. But instead they’re building an arsenal, and they look like an army.

  “Wow,” I breathe, watching the crowd.

  “Yeah, things are pretty messed up,” Leoben says. “You try telling three billion people to just chill out after having their memories wiped.”

  “Wait—they’re choosing to do this? This isn’t something Cartaxus ordered them to do?”

  “They’re not just choosing it,” he says. “They’re the ones telling Cartaxus to build weapons. They’re organizing military training for themselves. Dax and the rest of Cartaxus’s leaders are scrambling to keep up. The civilians want to attack the genehackers on the surface. They want security. That’s what they say, at least. I think they just want to lash out at someone.”

  I stare at the civilians. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. We worked so hard to stop flood protocol and show these people the true horror of Cartaxus’s attacks on the surface, but it hasn’t helped at all.

  A woman at one of the nearby tables stands up suddenly, twitching. She lets out a strangled shout, clawing at her chest. The people around her back away instantly, pushing past one another in their rush to get away.

  “Oh shit,” Leoben says. “Come on. This place is gonna be swarming with guards. We’d better get out of here.”

  “What’s wrong?” I ask, watching the woman. She’s doubled over, gasping, but nobody is coming to help her. She looks like she’s choking.

  “Seriously, let’s go,” Leoben says. “This might get violent soon.”

  My heart rate rises. People are running away from the woman now. It’s what I’d expect if she were infected, but I don’t see any signs of that. No bruises, no fever. She’s obviously sick, though. Her head snaps back, her eyes rolling.

  A chill ripples through me as the woman convulses again. Her face is strained, almost as though she’s snarling. But that doesn’t make any sense. Doors on the side of the room fly open and armored guards race through. The woman turns as they get closer, her body going rigid. She lunges for the guards, letting out a roar of rage.

  “Holy shit,” I gasp, backing away. She just turned into a Lurker. The guards draw electric prods from their belts and jam them into her chest until she collapses on the floor. She twitches, letting out a choked scream. The guards strap metal cuffs around her wrists and ankles and pick her up between them, hauling her out of the room, leaving the doors swinging behind them.

  The people in the room are huddled together, watching in horror. Some of them are crying. Some are still pushing past one another to get out. But they started to move the moment she stood up. They knew what to do, which means this has happened before.

  “We shouldn’t have to live like this!” a man shouts, hugging a weeping teenage girl. The crowd rumbles in assent.

  “What just happened?” I hiss to Leoben. “Did that woman just turn into a Lurker?”

  He nods, his jaw set. “Yeah, she did, and we don’t know how to stop it. It’s been happening a lot. Every bunker, every day. We’re losing thousands around the world. Jun Bei’s code is glitching—that’s what’s causing this. It’s why Lachlan is scrambling to fix the vaccine.”

  Goose bumps prickle across my skin. The man hugging the weeping girl steps away from her and stands on a chair, looking out at the crowd. “Are we going to let them lock us away and keep attacking us like this?”

  “No!” the crowd responds, their voices sharp with anger.

  “We have to take our homes back!” a woman yells. “We should have let Brink finish them off when he had the chance!”

  The crowd roars. I step back, my arms clutched around my chest. Somehow, things are worse than they were before flood protocol. These people are lost in anger and pain, looking to take it out on anyone they can. I thought that showing the civilians the truth about Cartaxus would turn them against Cartaxus—that they’d see the violence and control that had kept the world divided for so long. I didn’t realize how afraid they were, though. How helpless they’ve felt, locked up underground for years, with no way out. I thought it was Brink who posed the biggest threat to the people on the surface. But I was wrong. These bunkers are pressure cookers, threatening to boil over.

  Now these people want a war, and I have no idea how to stop it.

  “Come on,” Leoben urges. “I’ve had enough of this.”

  I nod, backing away. Leoben pushes through the door and back down the hallway. “Like I said, things are pretty messed up.”

  “I thought you might agree with them,” I say. “When we met, you told me it was the genehackers who were keeping everyone here locked away.”

  “Yeah.” He scratches his neck. “Killing them all isn’t the answer either.”

  “There has to be a way for people to live togeth…,” I start, and trail off as the hallway disappears, replaced by a flash through Jun Bei’s eyes.

  It only lasts a second, leaving me reeling. I grab the wall beside me, dragging in a breath, silver stars spinning in my vision. Jun Bei was hurt this time, but not as badly as she was in the other flashes I’ve seen. The base of my skull pulses with a knifelike, burning ache.

  The implant must be getting weaker. The wall between Jun Bei and me is starting to break down.

  “Are you okay?” Leoben asks. “You disappeared for a second.”

  I nod, swallowing, still trying to process what I saw. In the flash, I was standing by a hole blown in a concrete wall, looking out on the park inside Entropia’s bunker. The atrium rose up in a column of empty space, stretching hundreds of floors above me, where steel blast doors were locked shut against the sky. The park was bustling with people gathered around wooden tables, making soup and handing out blankets. It looked like a lot of people were hurt. Cole was beside me, but I really wasn’t looking at him. I was staring down at the park, where a woman was letting out a bloodcurdling scream.

  A shiver creeps across my skin. Though I’m back in the hallway with Leoben and away from Entropia, the sound of the woman’s scream is still echoing in my ears. A man was fighting with her, his eyes wild, his lips curled into a snarl. He was lunging wildly, his teeth snapping, his hands clawing for her face, lost in the Wrath.

  I look up at Leoben. This is more than déjà vu. That scene in Entropia was the exact same thing that happened here at Cartaxus just a few minutes ago. Someone turned into a Lurker in the middle of a crowd in a busy open space. The genehackers were screaming, scattering, running for cover, just like the civilians were here.

  Leoben said that Jun Bei’s code is glitching, but suddenly I’m not so sure. I’ve seen people turn like this before, at Sunnyvale, when Lachlan took control of the vaccine. I’ve spent three years being manipulated and lied to, treated like a pawn, and forced to play in a bigger game than I could see or und
erstand.

  But my eyes are open now, and the two scattering crowds I’ve seen suddenly seem like pawns in a bigger, more vicious plot. I think Ziana’s note was right—none of this is happening by accident. The two attacks can’t be random. It’s too much of a coincidence.

  I think someone is controlling this. They’re triggering these attacks, building tensions, and trying to start a war.

  We’re all still being played.

  CHAPTER 9 JUN BEI

  THE SCREAMS IN THE PARK grow louder. I push away from Cole and stride across the lab. The gaping hole in the concrete wall offers a jagged view of the crowded park below us. I lean out, staring down. The people in the park are scattering, some limping and crawling between rows of medical cots. Their clothes are bloodied, but I can’t tell if their injuries are fresh or if they were hurt by the Lurkers in the caves. They seem to be running away from a man with a white-blond ponytail and a greenish tint to his skin. Chlorophyll. He’s one of the hydroponics workers. I’ve met him once—he was friendly, a little shy. Now his face is curled back in a snarl.

  “Oh no,” I whisper.

  Cole runs to my side, his eyes blinking to black. Down in the park, a blood-soaked figure is lying at the man’s feet. A woman is struggling with him, trying to get away, but he’s gripping her by the hair. A knife gleams in his other hand, and his arm is slick with blood up to his elbow. My stomach lurches as he yanks the woman closer and drives the knife into her side.

  “No, no,” I gasp, backing away, my hand clutched to my mouth. The wounded woman is still fighting even though there’s a blade lodged in her ribs. The man twists the knife, and her scream cuts the air. She’s being murdered right in front of me, and it’s my code that’s turned her attacker into the monster he is now. But there’s still a chance that I can save her.

  “I have to go.” I turn, and race across the lab.

  “Wait, Jun Bei!” Cole shouts, but I’m already gone. My shoulder hits the lab’s steel door, shoving it open, and I scramble out into the stairwell. There are bullet holes in the concrete and shell casings littering the stairs from Cartaxus’s attack. I grab the metal railing and careen down the stairs, swaying to keep myself upright. My balance is gone, and my muscles are starting to shake with exhaustion, but I’m still strong enough to run. I have to reach that woman before she dies.

  “Jun Bei, wait!” Cole’s footsteps pound down the stairwell after me.

  “Stay in the lab!” I shout, breathless. I race down the last flight of stairs, reaching the bottom landing that leads out to the park. Code to launch a genetic scan is loaded in my cuff, ready to be deployed. Judging by the woman’s injuries, she only has a few minutes left until she bleeds out. Saving Clara didn’t help me finish the Panacea, but now I have another chance, and I can’t let it slip away.

  I dash out of the stairwell, racing across the bottom landing and outside, my boots crunching on the scorched ground.

  “You’re not even armed!” Cole shouts, his rifle clicking against his belt as he runs.

  “Let me handle this!” I yell back. The air is ringing with screams, the crowd panicking. A woman carrying a limping man clips my shoulder as she shoves past me. I stumble, searching for the wounded woman and the man with the knife, but I can’t see anything from here.

  “Jun Bei!” Cole shouts again, his voice raised and frantic. He shouldn’t be out in the open like this—not armed and dressed in Cartaxus gear. But I don’t have time to deal with him. The wounded woman doesn’t have long. She might already be bleeding out. I scan the park, my eyes locking on the white-haired man, then I lift my arms to shield my face and dart into the crowd.

  It’s like running into a hailstorm. The crowd is too panicked to part around me, and I try to dodge them as I run, but it’s useless. Limbs and shoulders slam into me from every side, an elbow to my bandaged face causing a burst of pain that snatches the breath from my lungs.

  Cole’s voice rings out behind me. “To your left!”

  I follow his eyes, spotting a path through the crowd to the blond-haired man. We’re still twenty feet away. The wounded woman is alive and fighting, but there are too many people between us, and I don’t have a chance of reaching her in time. I look over my shoulder at Cole, sliding my gun from its holster. Then I lift the barrel and fire a round into the air.

  The reaction is instantaneous. The crowd drops to the ground, scrambling for cover. It’s enough to give me a jagged path through them, to let me make a dash for the bloodied woman. I start running, my chest burning, my vision shaking with the force of my footsteps. Before I’m halfway there, the man wrenches the knife from the woman’s side and draws back to stab her again.

  Time seems to slow. The knife inches closer to her chest, the afternoon light catching on the thick scarlet blood dripping from her shirt. She can’t take another wound like that. He’s going to kill her right in front of me. There isn’t time to think it through. There’s only one way to save her.

  I lock my eyes on the man and send the scythe into his panel.

  The code hits him like a bullet. His eyes go blank, rolling back in his head, and he slumps to the ground. I brace myself for a rush of guilt—for breaking my promise to Ruse, and for taking another life. But instead, a fresh surge of adrenaline hits me. I feel suddenly powerful. I vault over a huddled couple, race for the bleeding woman, and fall to my knees beside her.

  “Just hold on,” I say. The woman’s hair is pink and shoulder length, dotted with crystal beads. Her pink eyes drift shut as I hack into her panel. There’s no time to ask permission. I kick off the genetic scan I’ll need to monitor the Panacea, praying it finishes before she flatlines. There’s more than one gash in her side, and her lips are turning blue, but if I can stem the source of the bleeding and prevent her heart from stalling, I should be able to keep her alive long enough.

  Then I can let her die, and I’ll finally have the data I need. I just have to make sure I don’t heal her too quickly, like I did with Matrix’s wife.

  “Here,” Cole says, dropping down beside me. He slides a healing vial from his pocket, pressing it to her side. She arches her back, gasping, her eyes rolling up in her head. Data from her panel spins across my vision. The scan is 50 percent complete, but her vitals are dropping fast. I send an army of nanites to stop the bleeding in her side, but her heart is already struggling. I’m starting to lose her.

  “She needs fluid!” I yell, looking around. We’re surrounded by medical supplies. Someone has to be able to help me keep her alive. Her vitals are plummeting, her body going limp. “Someone, please! I need an IV!”

  “Jun Bei,” Cole says.

  “Where the hell is Ruse?” I spit. The scan is almost at 90 percent. I send a desperate surge of nanites through the woman’s veins, trying to buy her more time.

  “Jun Bei,” Cole says again, his voice low and soft, but I barely hear him.

  The woman gives a final shudder, her eyes fluttering, and then she’s gone.

  “It’s too late,” Cole says gently.

  But it’s not too late. I hold my breath, frozen as readings scroll across my vision. The woman is dead—her heart has stopped and her systems are shutting down—but the genetic scan finished a millisecond before she flatlined.

  I finally have the data I need.

  Cole reaches for my shoulder, but I shrug his hand away. My mind is spinning, scrambling to make sense of the readings from the woman’s panel. The Panacea failed when she died, and it’s glitching inside her cells right now, but the error isn’t anything like I expected.

  This isn’t a typo or a lapse in logic. It looks like the missing piece in the code is linked to the genetic research the Panacea is based on. I don’t remember writing it, but I know I used data from Lachlan’s experiments to craft the code. And it’s data from Leoben’s DNA that’s missing.

  “No,” I whisper.

  “You did everything you could,” Cole says. He’s trying to comfort me, but he doesn’t understand. It’s
not possible for me to fix this glitch on my own. I’d need Leoben or Lachlan to finish the Panacea. I can’t save this woman. I can’t save anyone.

  Everything I’ve done over the last few weeks has been for nothing.

  “Clear a path!” a voice shouts. Ruse is pushing through the crowd. His eyes widen as he reaches us. “What the hell is happening, Jun Bei?”

  “I couldn’t save her,” I say. There’s blood on my hands—blood all over me. I feel suddenly empty. I’ve had the Panacea circling through my mind for weeks, trying to figure out how to fix it, but it was just a waste of time.

  Ruse sucks in a breath through gritted teeth. He looks at the crowd. “We need to lock down the border and the tunnels into the city. I want teams to set up checkpoints around the razorgrass. The rest of you—go back to your homes and be on the alert until we figure out what’s happening. This is the third person I’ve seen turn today. We need to be ready for more.” Ruse’s eyes cut to Cole, narrowing. “You’re a goddamn Cartaxus agent.”

  “He was one of the people who defended this city during flood protocol,” I say. “He’s here about the Lurkers. This is happening everywhere. It’s… it’s the glitch in the Panacea that’s doing this.”

  Ruse looks horrified. He stares down at the dead woman on the ground. A shocked murmur ripples through the crowd gathering around us.

  “I can’t fix it on my own,” I say, dropping my eyes. “Cartaxus wants us to work together. It might be the only way.”

  Cole stands, looking nervously at the crowd. His dark clothes and the antlers on his chest might as well be a neon sign declaring him our enemy even though he took a bullet defending this city just a few weeks ago.

  “Cartaxus has invited you to bring a team to a joint research facility,” he says. “You can choose your people, and you won’t be prisoners. They want to work together to fix the code that’s doing this. Cartaxus is sending Lachlan Agatta there, along with their best researchers. You’ll have all the equipment and resources you need.”