The Immortality Virus

by Christine Amsden

  “A pause while we bring in another player,” Ethan said. “You could have a drink. All you have to do is give me one name. That’s all. Just one. Did you tell someone on the farm, perhaps? Probably not, but if you did, just give me the name. They’re just a slave. What would it matter?”

  Jane’s name popped into her head. All she had to do was say it and she’d get water at the expense of a woman who’d tried to have her killed. Jane...Jane....from barracks 37 Jane.

  She clamped her mouth tightly shut.

  The door slid open again and the guard returned, forcing a worse-for-wear Alex before him.

  He still had clothes, but they were torn and every inch of exposed skin was covered in lacerations. He had several day’s growth of facial hair, which gave Grace her first clue as to how long they had been down there. She had been figuring two days–a long time for a human to go without water but not too long. Time enough to torture her still.

  “Hello, Alex,” Ethan said, politely. “I was hoping you would be able to tell me where the diary is and what it says. I know you got your hands on it. It’s here, somewhere.”

  Alex shook his head but did not speak.

  “You forget, Alex. I know your weakness.” Ethan pressed a button and Grace convulsed so hard it almost broke her back. She screamed, a bloody scream that ripped her throat in ways she thought might never heal.

  “You can make it stop, Alex,” Ethan said. “Look what you’re doing to her.”

  Alex gave Grace a haunted look, and in that instant, she knew he could crack. The man might be able to handle his own torture, but for some reason she felt he couldn’t handle hers.

  “Don’t say anything, Alex,” Grace croaked. She wasn’t sure he would hear her with that horrible rasp in her voice. “I can handle it.”

  “But he can’t,” Ethan said. “He hasn’t told you all about himself, has he? He’s rescued slaves from this farm, found them work, and sent them away. He’s found a perfect food source to feed all of humanity but is holding it back because if he tells anyone before other arrangements can be made, all the slaves will be turned out with nothing.”

  Really?

  “Oh, and it gets better,” Ethan said. “This is the man who purposefully estranged himself from his daughter when someone found out so they couldn’t use her against him. The man died a couple of months ago. How has she responded to your attempts to win her back now that she’s safe?”

  Alex tried to spit at Ethan, but seemed to have as little moisture in his body as Grace. The effort was wasted.

  “Don’t tell him anything,” Grace said. She wanted to go on, but the pain was back and kept her from speaking. She had to fight not to bite her tongue as her body convulsed once more.

  When the pain eased, Grace started talking immediately. “Alex won’t say anything. He’s a humanitarian. You’ve misjudged him. One life for hundreds of bill–”

  “Stop!” Alex shouted.

  The pain stopped. Grace couldn’t speak, though. All she could do was gasp for air. She felt like her lungs would collapse the next time Ethan turned that thing on.

  “Yes?” Ethan asked. “Where’s the diary?”

  “It’s in my quarters.”

  “We already–”

  “You didn’t pull back the carpeting and find the secret compartment there.”

  Ethan hesitated. “If you’re lying, this moves to the next level. You can only do so much with the cuffs, you know.”

  “It’s there,” Alex said. He sounded like he meant it, too. Grace kept her head down and did nothing to show, through word or action, that she was surprised by his lie.

  “Fine. My guards will begin the search. You two can have ten minutes together as a reward.” Ethan stood and left the room, trailed by two guards. As they left, the room shook again.

  Alex’s hands were cuffed behind him but his legs were free. He took a quick look around the room, found the video surveillance, and moved close to Grace so his back was blocking her from the scrutiny of the camera.

  She suddenly became aware or her nakedness. A stupid and useless line of thought, of course, especially since she hadn’t cared about half a dozen strangers seeing her that way.

  Then Alex leaned in close and whispered, “They’re listening.”

  She barely heard him. Her ears were ringing and she did not trust herself to say anything quietly enough that the monitors wouldn’t pick it up. For all she knew, they’d heard Alex’s comment.

  They’d be back in ten minutes and then they would get really nasty. She wanted to know why Alex had bothered, but couldn’t bring herself to ask lest they heard her and their ten minutes became two.

  “Did you feel the building shake?” Alex said so softly he practically mouthed the words. Grace found herself reading lips more than listening.

  She nodded.

  “There are more forces at play here than just one. I think it was an attack. They just need time to make it work.”

  “Who?”

  “We’ll see.”

  That was the last he said on the subject. They sat there in silence for a while, Grace’s mind reeling through the possibilities. Ethan hadn’t left her in here as long as she’d expected. She had no idea how long, but definitely not long enough to wear her mind down the way he should have done. He had come in shortly after the shaking began–coincidence?

  No, it couldn’t be coincidence. Ethan didn’t have as much time as he thought he would have to break her. He had to do it more quickly, more clumsily, and he might have to kill her before the enemy got to her.

  “We won’t live long enough,” Grace mouthed.

  Alex nodded once to show he understood. Then he did something strange–he began to make himself gag. Grace backed up, waiting for an explosion of vomit like the one she’d created, but it didn’t come. There was some bile and a little liquid, but mostly there was just a coded electronic key, protected from the bile by a small plastic cover.

  Grace’s eyes widened in shock.

  “I still have friends here,” Alex whispered. He slumped to the ground at her feet and turned to lean his head against her legs. He tried to make it look like the act of a weary man taking comfort in a friend–or even a lover. Grace shuffled her knees to knock the key to the floor where he scooped it up in his hands, tied behind his back, and began working on her ankle cuffs.

  When she felt them open, she did not move her feet immediately. “Alex, will you scratch my back?”

  Alex nodded and moved behind her, again using the key to unfasten her wrist cuffs and torso binding. Then he handed her the key and turned, asking, “Will you get mine?”

  She did exactly that. Then they stayed there, frozen in place, waiting for their opportunity. They both knew without saying there would be only once chance, and it would be risky.

  The building shook again. Whoever was trying to get in was being more persistent. Would it be enough, though? They had to stay alive long enough for whoever it was to get inside here.

  And then they had to hope whatever was out there was better than what was in here.

  All she knew was it couldn’t be any worse and the idea of taking some action made her feel alive again.

  The minutes seemed to span a lifetime. Grace flexed her fingers and toes, trying to work blood back into those parts of her body, but she did not reveal her freedom to the camera or to her captors.

  The door slid open. Ethan came in, his face livid, flanked by two guards with holstered disruptors, wheeling a cart with some sharp, uncomfortable looking implements.

  Good. They didn’t know their prisoners were free.

  “You lied,” Ethan said. “And now we move on to nastier tactics.”

  The building shook again. Grace took it as her cue. She stood and lunged, throwing off the useless cuffs as she reached for the nearest guard. Briefly, she saw Alex lunging at the other, but she blanked their struggle from her mind as she grabbed one of the sharp implements from the table and thrust it into the hand that
was going for the disruptor.

  The guard screamed. Grace took his disruptor from his holster and turned towards the other guard, ready to fire if Alex needed assistance. He didn’t. He, too, seemed to have caught his target by surprise and had his weapon.

  Grace wheeled to face Ethan, who was backing out of the room. Not bothering to check the settings on the disruptor, she aimed and fired at the retreating figure. A gold stun light hit him squarely in the chest, and he fell to the floor, unconscious.

  Perfect. She turned and fired at the now defenseless guards, sending them both unconscious to the floor.

  “They were surrendering,” Alex said.

  “We couldn’t exactly take them with us. They’re just stunned.”

  Alex didn’t argue further. He peered out into the corridor and looked both ways. “Sub-basement. Not too many people allowed down here.”

  “Is that good?” Grace asked.

  “That part is. Less people to fight to get out of here. Trouble is, there’s only one way in or out and by now the alarm will have been raised.”

  Sure enough, from off to their left, a door banged open and half a dozen men poured out, some wearing the black uniform of Ethan’s guards, some wearing the red and brown uniforms of the farmers.

  Grace and Alex didn’t hesitate. They started firing. Unfortunately, their attackers didn’t hesitate either.

  They each got off one good shot before they found themselves back in their prison, using the open doorway as a safe haven.

  Disruptor charges flew by–red, not gold. Grace waited. Patience would save her here, not brute force. They needed to come to her, to be the first to expose themselves.

  “You then me,” Alex whispered.

  Grace switched to kill and shot at the first appendage that came into view–a weapon arm. She heard a scream and the arm disintegrated as the weapon fell to the floor.

  A second later, Alex fired a stunning charge at a farmer, but it just bounced off his body armor. Grace fired again, taking the man’s leg out from under him. “Stuns won’t do any good!” she called.

  Alex didn’t seem to hear her because after another moment he fired another stunner into the chest of a black-clad guard. This one did go down. Apparently, only the farmers were wearing the armor.

  Things got quiet after that. No more came into view.

  “That wasn’t all of them,” Alex whispered.

  “They’re waiting for us to leave,” Grace whispered back. If they did, they would have the same disadvantage as the men they’d shot down. But staying here was suicide, too. Those outside had less to lose by waiting.

  “There were six,” Grace whispered. Three were down, which left three. If they waited any longer, there might be more.

  “All right,” Alex said, not keeping his voice low. “On three.” He held up a fist and said, “One.” He held up one finger and said, “Two.” He held up a second finger and said, “Three.”

  Several disruptor shots fell where their chests would have been had they actually moved then. They didn’t even wait a second after that to jump out and begin firing.

  They each got off a shot, Grace downing a black-clad guard and Alex blasting the arm off a farmer.

  The last man standing got a shot off before either of them had a chance to re-aim. Grace dove towards the shelter of their prison, but too late.

  She felt something heavy hit her weapon hand. She heard the clang of metal as her disruptor hit the ground and bounced. It wasn’t until she reached for the disruptor that she saw what had happened.

  Her hand was gone. She stared at the charred stump of her arm in numb disbelief.

  Dimly, she registered Alex picking off the final attacker, but she could not tear her eyes away from her ruined arm.

  “Grace.” Alex sucked in his breath. “It’s okay. There’s no blood. The disruptor cauterized it.”

  That made it okay?

  “Grace, we have to move.”

  His words seemed to come from far away and she couldn’t quite make sense of them.

  “Grace!”

  “Uh huh.” She wasn’t entirely sure what she was agreeing to, but she followed, her eyes on her injury. Her mind couldn’t quite accept it, yet.

  The building shook again.

  Move! Grace forced herself forward, stepping over some of the farmers they had injured. A couple were also nursing injured stumps and seemed not to notice their captors fleeing the scene.

  She saw the stairs up ahead and expected to find herself flying at another dozen armed men she would never be able to fight her way past. She looked left and right for another place to use as a barricade when they came shooting

  No one came.

  They flew up the stairs much faster and with much less prudence than Grace would have preferred, but no one came.

  The basement level lay still and quiet, as if holding its breath. Grace didn’t like it, but she followed Alex through the maze of corridors and to his secret room, her mind buzzing with pain she could barely register. It was as if the trauma had turned off all her nerve endings. Or maybe adrenaline did that. She wasn’t sure, but she knew she’d feel it soon and she wondered if she’d black out when she did. Part of her would welcome the blackness but another part, the part that still held onto tiny tendrils of rational thought, knew she couldn’t give in to the pain or the blackness. Not if she wanted to live.

  Somehow, they made it to the entrance of the secret room. Alex opened the door and they collapsed onto the queen-size bed.

  They lay like that for a while. Grace’s heart stilled and her body throbbed. Her eyes burned as if on fire.

  “Water,” Grace panted.

  Alex was already there, pulling a bottle of water from the stash he’d saved. He twisted the cap off one and handed it to her before gulping down his own.

  Grace did the same, groaning indecently when she finished. Alex took out two more bottles, but didn’t offer one to her right away.

  “Let me see that arm.”

  It was better when she didn’t think about the hand. Now that she focused her attention on it, it felt as if it were on fire. Ridiculous, since she didn’t have a hand anymore. It couldn’t have felt like anything.

  “There’s not much I can do for it,” Alex said. “We should probably keep it moist to prevent the charred skin from cracking. You need to see a doctor, but under the circumstances, I don’t think heading to the infirmary would be a good idea.”

  “I’ll be okay,” Grace muttered. “We just need to get out of here.”

  “You can’t fight. You can barely move. And I’m not in much better shape.” He went back to the desk and pulled two nutri-bars from a drawer. He handed one to Grace. “Eat this slowly.”

  That was easier said than done. She tried to slow herself, but for the first time in memory, the nutri-bar tasted like heaven to her.

  “I really thought I would die in that room,” Grace said. She remembered thinking that this room, the one she had shared with Alex, had looked like a prison, but now it felt almost like home. A big part of her didn’t want to leave. They were safe here–until the food and water ran out. Or until the burnt flesh of her arm got the better of her and she died from an infection of some sort.

  “Uncle Ethan is good at what he does,” Alex said. “He got sloppy today. I can only assume the attack threw him off. I can also only assume the attack is what kept other farmers from responding to our escape.”

  “Attempted escape,” Grace corrected. “We’re not out yet. We’re back where we were. How long were we held captive?”

  “Two days, I think, based on what I overheard one of the guards say. I wish I’d thought to keep my spare portable in here so I could look up the date and time.”

  For a moment, Grace wondered what they had done to Alex. Had they tried the same tactics on him? Or had Ethan used what he knew of his nephew to try something else?

  She stared at him for a moment–his sunken cheeks and sallow eyes. He hadn’t been fed or wat
ered, that much was clear.

  She shut it out of her mind. It was over. Over. Over. She never had to think of it again, except possibly in the middle of the night. Or when she looked at her right arm.

  Grace shuddered.

  To her surprise, she found an arm around her shoulder. More surprisingly still, she didn’t push it away. She rested her head on a warm, welcoming shoulder and let strong, calloused hands stroke her hair as if she were a child. For a minute, she let her mind blank out and she lost herself in the warmth of his touch.

  The smell of vomit returned Grace to reality. It was hers–not his. Apparently, Ethan had skipped the whole fancy dinner ruse with him.

  Grace drew away. Wordlessly, Alex released his hold and moved to the chair across from the mattress.

  “Our best chance to get out is under cover of this attack,” Alex said.

  “Do you know who’s out there?” Grace asked.

  Alex shook his head.

  “But you have an idea?”

  “There was a rumor that William Edgers was taking an interest in this matter. I think he and Mr. Cooper–the one who just died–were good friends. Mr. Cooper might have told Mr. Edgers what he knew.”

  “And what did he know?” She should have asked before. Why hadn’t she asked if Alex had told anyone?

  “I told him you had a lead on the secrets of aging. We spent a lot of time philosophizing. I think owning a farm–owning people–gave him a unique perspective into the problems with long life.”

  Grace didn’t know what to say. So much for secrecy. “And William Edgers?”

  “Don’t know him personally. Who does, really? Mr. Cooper did, and he talked about the man like any other–good qualities and bad. But I think he wouldn’t be attacking this farm just to kill you. Uncle Ethan could have handled that.”

  “Your uncle likes things the way they are. He seems willing to go to extreme lengths to make sure they stay that way.”

  Alex nodded. “I didn’t realize he knew so much about my grandfather. I never knew. I guess that’s part of the point, though.”