by Ellis, Tara
A low vibration stopped her next question, and she watched as ripples formed in the coffee. They both stared at it until it increased to the point that they could feel it in their chairs, and Edmonds looked up at her in shock.
“Earthquake!” Peta shouted, already diving under the table they were conveniently sitting at. Though they were only one level below the surface, she couldn’t help but feel the first stirrings of her old familiar friend, panic. Squatting, she gripped the table legs on either side of her with white-knuckle intensity while squeezing her eyes shut. Focusing on her breathing, Peta tried to block out the slight rolling motion and increasing hum of the cement structure.
“I think it’s stopping,” Edmonds huffed, sounding far-away inside his mask.
Peta opened her eyes to find herself staring into Sergeant Edmonds frightened face, only inches away from her own. She had no idea how long they’d been cowering there, since the fear caused her to lose her perception of time, though it couldn’t have been more than a few minutes.
Clearing his throat, Sergeant Edmonds crawled out from under the table and quickly stood, tugging at his jacket and doing his best to look collected. “That, uh…wasn’t so bad.”
Standing, Peta noticed the coffee cup hadn’t moved from its spot, and nothing had fallen from the walls. It wasn’t until then that she realized she’d already envisioned the cement crumbling and support beams collapsing. Taking a breath of recirculated air, she chuckled lightly. “Yeah, just a baby.”
“Think it could have been the San Andreas Fault?” Edmonds asked. “It’s only around a couple-hundred miles from here.”
Peta shrugged. “I suppose.” Pulling at her hair, she distractedly put it up into a messy bun. She couldn’t focus on more than one catastrophe at a time. Already forcing her concerns over the earthquake from her mind, she made the decision to go find Ann. She was tired of waiting.
In spite of the woman’s brashness, they’d gotten along right away. Ann was very intelligent, and understood immediately what all of Peta’s collective research meant. By dinnertime the night before, she was up-to-date on everything Peta knew, and already moving forward to include what they had been able to surmise from studying the sick, as well as the few recovered and immune that had shown up. They were ready to start working on some theories, which would entail networking with the virologists down on the lower levels. According to what Edmonds was telling her, they had even less time than she’d realized.
“Uh, where are we going now?” Sergeant Edmonds called out, scurrying to catch up with Peta.
Before she could answer, Garrett filled the doorway wearing a bright yellow class A hazmat suit. She took it as a bad sign.
“Good, you’re here,” Garrett said, his voice muffled. “You guys okay?”
Annoyed at being delayed, Peta frowned and tried to wave him away. “The earthquake? That was nothing compared to what I’ve experienced these past couple of weeks.” She hesitated when he didn’t move, and instead looked back and forth nervously between her and Edmonds. “But that isn’t what brought you up here looking like a character from a Pixar movie, is it?”
“The Kuru has breeched containment,” he said bluntly.
Peta staggered back a step as her stomach knotted. She thought she might throw-up. “Because of us?”
Shaking his head, Garrett moved further into the room and began gathering up the papers she had strewn across one of the tables. “No. The first symptoms amongst staff began showing up a couple hours before you arrived yesterday. We’ve been housing infected patients for three days now. We thought we’d contained it to Level 4 last night, but—” he looked at her then, his features blurred by the plastic. “Ann and more than a dozen others so far have fallen ill, including two on level 1. It’s out, and there’s no putting that genie back in the bottle.”
“What can I do?” Peta asked, disliking the total sense of helplessness she was experiencing. She had hoped reaching the CDC was a turning point. She knew how dangerous the setting was of course, but being surrounded by other professionals, who gave the impression of being in control when everything was in chaos, gave her a false sense of security.
Garrett shoved the papers at her. “Get to the source.”
“What about the sample I brought you?” she asked, confused by what he was suggesting.
“It was helpful, and confirmed a couple of things for me. That, along with our studies of the Cured and Immune have helped us finalize a treatment regimen I’ve been working on. But I’m afraid that it isn’t enough. It might help keep them alive for a few more days, at best.”
Garrett’s shield was fogging up as he spoke, and he paused to let the circulating air in his suit clear it off. “The sample was too old, and the interaction between the prion and thermophile had already occurred, if that is in fact what’s happening. We won’t know that until someone has gone to the source and confirmed it. You were right about that. Historically, prions have been incredibly hard to study and after more than half a century, we still don’t even understand how they work. There could be a naturally occurring component to all of this. Something we haven’t even considered, so who knows what else you might learn or discover? It’s an absolute long-shot and probably a dead end, but right now it’s all we have left.”
“How will we communicate?” Peta asked, still trying to process everything. “You aren’t going to even know if I got there, let alone what I find.”
“I’ve given our ham radio frequency to your pilot,” Garrett said. “He’ll know how to use it, so long as you find a radio.”
“Hold on!” Sergeant Edmonds shouted, moving in between Peta and Garrett. She thought he was about to protest the suggestion that she leave the base. “If you’re wearing that thing, does that mean I need one, too?” His voice cracked as he began gesticulating wildly at the much simpler mask covering just his face.
“Absolutely,” Garrett snapped back without any hesitation. “You need to get to decontamination immediately and then suit up in a Class A suit. Are you cleared for that?” When Edmonds nodded, Garrett put a guiding hand on his back and pushed him toward the door. “I’ll stay with Dr. Kelly and take full responsibility for her.”
As Peta watched the young soldier run from the room, it might have been funny in another lifetime, under different circumstances. Instead, she found herself wanting to cry. He was most likely already dead.
As Edmonds left, another man in a yellow suit stepped aside to let him pass. She was wondering what sort of excuses Garrett was going to come up with for taking her to the surface, when she recognized the gait. “Hernandez?”
“In the flesh,” he said with an exaggerated air, but Peta could tell immediately that he didn’t sound good.
“Like I said, you’re going to need a pilot,” Garrett explained, when she looked questioningly at him.
“Doesn’t the pilot need to be conscious?” she asked as she moved closer to Hernandez so she could see his face. “I thought you were sick, and it’s going to be a very long flight.”
“I am.” Shrugging, Hernandez pointed at Garrett. “But boy wonder here juiced me up and so far, I’ve only got a manageable headache.”
She pivoted to stare at Garrett. “You can’t be planning on simply walking us out of here. You aren’t military, and it sure seems like they’re the ones calling the shots.”
“You’re absolutely right,” he confirmed. “Which is why we’re making a stop at the new VIP sickroom being set up down the hall. I happen to know a high-ranking officer who is very desperate for a dose of my newly developed medication.”
Smiling, Peta looked back at Garrett, still clutching the papers to her chest. “What about the others?”
“There’s no way to get to them,” he answered as he shook his head inside the domed suit. “It was a major feat for me to sneak this guy out, and now the whole place is about to go on an even tighter lockdown. Which is why we need to move. Now.”
Peta balked, and pulled away from
him when Garrett tried to take her by the arm. “There has to be a way. I can’t just leave them here!” She thought of Tyler, and the promise she’d made his dad. And of Devon, who was a colleague and treasured friend.
“Do you see that klaxon above the door?” he demanded, pointing at the light. “It’s going to go off any minute, and once it does, my card isn’t going to work anymore. None of the cards will work from below the ground level. It’s a fail-safe built into the facility, designed to prevent anyone from leaving unless being retrieved from above. We’ll be stuck down here. Everyone will be, and if you don’t get out there and figure this thing out, it’s where we’re going to die. Over two-hundred people, Peta. Close to a hundred of those are some of the brightest scientists in this country and are the best hope we have at beating this thing, with the information you get to us.”
Hernandez stepped past him and grabbed at her hand. “Peta.”
She closed her eyes.
What would Henry do?
Deeper. The feelings of loss, sorrow, and despair had to be pushed deeper. She couldn’t afford to mourn for her mom, Henry, and past sacrifices. All that mattered was moving forward. To carry out the plan.
She gripped the hand Hernandez offered.
They’d see it through to the end.
Chapter 25
TYLER
Black Site, CDC Bio Level 4 Lab
Southern California
Tyler looked over at the shadowy form of Devon on the bed beside him. “You aren’t still asleep, are you?” The clock on the wall indicated it was 6:34 in the morning. Tyler didn’t even know what time zone they were in, and his own internal clock had been off for the past ten days. He had no clue if he should be eating, sleeping, or awake.
After lying there with his eyes open for most of the night, he’d finally drifted off, only to be snapped out of it by what had felt like an earthquake. It didn’t last very long and there weren’t any alarms or anyone running around, so he figured it wasn’t a big deal.
“The correct question was if I’m trying to go back to sleep.” Devon turned to face him and propped himself up on an elbow, causing the cot to creak. “You feel that quake?” When Tyler only nodded in response, Devon’s brows drew together with concern. “I’m sure they’d let us know if his condition changed.”
Tyler looked away. He didn’t want to talk about his dad. They had refused to let him go visit before lights out, and although they claimed he was doing okay, it was the main reason he’d hardly slept. Steadying his voice, Tyler sat up so he could see how Devon responded to his next question. “Whad’ya think they did with Ed?”
Ed was the old guy who couldn’t stop crying. He introduced himself soon after they arrived and hadn’t shut up until Dr. Chase took him somewhere after dinner. He didn’t come back, and the doctor’s statement about doing whatever was necessary to figure them out was the other reason for Tyler’s restless night. Would they come for him next? When would they decide the endless bloodwork and questionnaires weren’t enough?
Devon shrugged. “Probably getting the royal treatment somewhere.”
His lack of eye contact gave away Devon’s lie. “If by royal treatment, you mean brain surgery, then I agree.”
The cot creaked more as Devon swung his legs over the side, so that their knees were almost touching. “Why do you say that?”
Glancing at the opposite side of the room, Tyler confirmed the only other occupant was sleeping. Unlike Ed, the woman hadn’t spoken a word to anyone. “Because Dr. Chase said they’d do what they had to in order to crack our super powers.” Growing more serious, Tyler looked down at his hands in his lap. “And since these prions get inside our brains, then I’d guess that’s the best place for the scientists to look, to see what makes us different.”
The lack of a quick, witty response from Devon only added to Tyler’s mounting unease. He’d been trying to convince himself since they’d landed in the desert that he made the right decision to take his dad with them to the lab. All the fancy equipment, doctors, and medicine helped reinforce the feeling. Except, Tyler was discovering what his mom would have called strong instincts. At the moment it was telling him they’d stumbled into some sort of weird scene out of a slow-burn horror movie. The kind where you yell at them for being so stupid.
Rubbing at his eyes, Tyler tried to clear his head. He was still totally paranoid about getting a headache, or some of the other telltale signs of The Kuru, no matter what the doctor told him about his blood.
“They’d just use an MRI to look inside,” Devon said without a whole lot of confidence. “It’d be a lot easier, and my guess is we’re much more valuable to them alive.”
“Have you seen one of those lying around here?” Tyler countered. “I’m pretty sure this place is meant for looking at blood and pieces, not a whole living person. Wouldn’t they do that first, if they had it?”
He could tell Devon was trying to think up an optimistic reply, as he waved his hands around at the room. “Based on where we are right now, I’d say they’re equipped for handling patients here.”
Unconvinced but glad to have the distraction, Tyler was about to point out how new everything looked, when the only door opened. Dr. Chase entered with another man behind him, and they were both carrying trays with food.
It was then that Tyler noticed the absence of any other doctors or nurses, or people with clipboards and vials. There were no less than three of them in there at all times, before they went to bed. Standing, he turned so he could look out the huge glass window that formed one of the walls of the long, narrow room. There was only one person scurrying past. He couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman, because they were wearing the same inflated suits required down on level four.
Swallowing, Tyler faced Dr. Chase, feeling that with each step the man took, his fate was being sealed. Where was everyone? He knew it was early, but the place didn’t seem to be running on any regular clock, and there should have been a ton more stuff going on, considering what was at stake.
The two men set the trays on the only table and continued toward them. The second guy looked nervous, and kept glancing back at the door and out the window, like he was expecting something. He didn’t have a mask on, but he obviously didn’t share the same distinctive lack of emotions as the Cured. Dr. Chase had explained it all to Tyler the night before, like he was describing some uninteresting development in the common cold. It was another reason the guy freaked him out.
“This is Doctor Jason Hunter,” Dr. Chase said, skipping any other pleasantries.
Tyler and Devon exchanged a confused look. “Okay,” Devon said slowly. “And you guys are bringing us our breakfast because—”
“Because I’ve decided it’s best if we work together,” Dr. Chase said bluntly.
“Where’s Ed?” Tyler blurted. “Did you tell him the same thing?”
It was obvious Dr. Hunter didn’t know who he was talking about, but Dr. Chase waved a hand dismissively. “He’s absolutely fine, and recovering from a procedure. And no, what I’m proposing has nothing to do with him. He doesn’t share your unique origins, or knowledge of the source. We want to help get you there.”
Procedure?
Tyler was trying really hard not to get hung up on the word, and concentrated instead on the rest of it. “I don’t think they’re going to let us go.”
“I realize you’re some big neurologist,” Devon said, standing next to Tyler. “But the other docs down here made it pretty clear you’re in this place under “guest” privileges. You don’t even have a badge,” he pointed out, gesturing at the doctor’s plain T-shirt visible through the thin protective jumpsuit he wore, and the lack of any official insignia.
“You’re absolutely right,” Dr. Hunter said, pushing past Dr. Chase. “But listen, I’m immune like you guys. And I also need to get out of here, and according to my friend Eddy here, this place is about to explode.”
“Jason—” Eddy began, but Jason shot him a dirty look and
successfully shut him up. Tyler was warming up to the guy.
“The prion disease has gotten past their containment,” Jason continued, leaning closer and whispering. “That’s why there’s hardly anyone on this level right now. We don’t know when they’re going to admit they’ve lost control, but the one thing I do agree with Eddy about, is that we need to get outta here sooner than later. Will you help us do that? Together?”
“If that’s the case, then how is it you two are still being allowed to wander around?” Devon asked, clearly unconvinced.
Eddy huffed and glanced at his watch. “Because I made previous arrangements to have Dr. Hunter meet with you this morning, to see if we could correlate any commonalities in your histories. I have a plan to get us into the elevator, but I’m not sure how much time we have before the panic spreads. People are getting sick. Staff are getting sick.”
“Do you want out of here, or not?” Jason barked, his voice rising in pitch.
It had the desired effect. Of course, they did. Tyler grabbed at Devon’s arm and gave him a tug. “Let’s go.” He really didn’t care who they were, so long as they helped them get out. “Wait!” he suddenly gasped as they approached the door. “My dad. I can’t just leave him here.”
Eddy shook his head at him. “It’s not possible. He’s in a coma now.”
Tyler took a step back, an upwelling of emotions threatening to unbalance him.
“Which is actually a good thing,” Jason said quickly, his voice soft again. “I’ve had a lot of experience in treating people with this. Too much. They either die quickly, after a few days, or they fall into a coma where they last another two or three days. This buys him some more time, and from what Eddy’s been telling me, the combination of treatments they just came up with could double that. It might keep him alive long enough for you and your friends to get whatever it is you think will help everyone. You’re the best chance he has.”
