Dr. Roberts was pressing a button that had been covered by plastic, his gaze glued to the Kazzie’s.
Davin’s mouth opened wide as veins in his neck bulged.
Since I couldn’t hear him, all I saw was his silent roar. As soon as the green-tinged gas swirled around him, he hurtled himself one last time into the guard’s watch room. For the tiniest of seconds, I thought the window bent.
Despite my protests, Amy managed to haul me to the access door.
Davin’s face was still plastered to the glass. A snarl covered his features, any semblance to a normal human’s expression, gone. His eyes rolled back in his head. He crumpled to the ground.
Dr. Roberts smiled.
The access door closed, cutting off my view.
I DIDN’T REALIZE I was shaking until Amy walked me into the next hall. The image of Davin falling unconscious to the floor seared my mind. Dr. Roberts’ smile came next.
I’d never seen anybody treated like that. Ever.
I clasped my trembling palms together. They shook so badly.
“Are you okay?” Amy placed a hand on my shoulder.
I didn’t reply.
“Meghan?” she said gently. “Are you all right?”
I nodded automatically, but I couldn’t meet her gaze.
“Hey.” Amy nudged me. Placing both hands on my shoulders, she turned me toward her. “Meghan?”
I still couldn’t say anything.
She frowned. “It’s not always like that. In fact, it’s usually not like that.”
“How could he . . .” My voice broke. “Did he . . . ?”
Amy shook her head. “Davin will be fine. Unfortunately, Dr. Roberts is a bit of a sadistic prick.”
My eyes widened at how scathingly she spoke about our boss.
Amy sighed and ran a hand through her curls. “We’ve all had to accept a few things over the years. Sometimes, I forget how brutal it can appear. Just remember why we’re here. Okay?”
I nodded.
“Because without these Kazzies, we’ll never find a vaccine for us or them. Keep in mind, our experiments are done as humanely as possible. Usually, they’re knocked out and have no idea what’s been done to them. We make it as painless as possible.”
“Is that why Dorothy’s starving?” The question popped out of me before I could stop it.
Amy frowned. She looked like she wanted to say more, but instead, she hooked her arm through mine. “Come on. We still have a lot to do today.”
I followed her out of the Sanctum, and we continued the tour. The long walk helped. Some of my horror abated by the time we reached the Deep Freeze, as if physically distancing myself from Davin kept him mentally distanced too.
However, try as I might, flashes of Davin still crept into my mind. His rage. Him crumbling to the ground. Dr. Roberts’ smile. I shook myself and tried to focus on what Amy showed me.
The deep freeze was a huge storage facility maintained at negative fifty degrees to store Kazzie samples. According to Amy, Makanza couldn’t be stored in normal freezers, unlike most viruses. Researchers had to suit up and go through a middle chamber before being admitted inside the frozen storage. It was the only way to keep that temperature constant, yet another way Makanza was different.
After that, she showed me the Kazzie entertainment rooms through the various access windows. There was a library, movie theater, gym, indoor soccer field, and pool. The recreation facilities were huge, just like everything else in the Compound.
I took some comfort in the luxuriousness of the rooms. Something like that wouldn’t be built if the MRI didn’t care about the Kazzies. Obviously, someone cared.
“Until three months ago, they used to all hang out in these rooms together,” Amy explained as we walked back to the lab. “The previous director of our department encouraged their socializing. However, Dr. Roberts doesn’t agree with that practice.” Her words grew bitter.
“So the Kazzies all know each other?”
“Yep, until Dr. Roberts promotion, they spent their free time together in those rooms. Now, they’re only allowed out of their cells individually for two hours a day. Well, that is until Davin’s problems arose. Now, they’re all in isolation.”
I frowned. “Why can’t they see each other anymore?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
“So they haven’t had contact with anyone since Dr. Roberts’ promotion?”
“Correct.”
“And that was three months ago? That doesn’t seem fair.”
Amy just shrugged. “Welcome to the rules of our notorious Dr. Roberts.”
“Hmm.” I bit my lip.
Images of Davin’s face pressing against the glass flashed through my mind again. I did my best to listen as Amy began explaining all forty-one Makanza strains. But no matter how hard I tried to focus, my mind kept wandering back to Davin.
His face. His expression. His rage.
Just what exactly happens in Compound 26?
5 – DINNER
We had lunch with Mitch and Charlie in the cafeteria. I could barely eat. My stomach still churned from being around new people, but it was more than that. Davin’s image wouldn’t leave me. What happened to him after we left? It was a question that kept returning to the forefront of my thoughts.
Similar to Amy, Mitch and Charlie peppered me with questions. Personal ones. I tugged at my suit collar a few times and answered as best as I could. It didn’t help that my skirt was tight, like a corset pulled snuggly around my waist. At times, I thought I’d throw up right on the table from nerves and a tight waistline. Luckily, everyone was busy so lunch was fast.
“Okay, let’s head back to my office.” Amy stuffed the last bite of her sandwich into her mouth. An ooze of mayo dripped off her finger. Real mayonnaise. When did I last see that? The din in the cafeteria hummed around us.
So many people. So many new faces.
My stomach lurched as I forced down my last spoonful of soup.
“You two stay out of trouble.” Mitch stood. Upright, he towered over us. “We’ll see you in the lab when Captain Roberts deems you worthy.” He winked at me.
Charlie brushed a piece of shaggy, black hair from his eyes. “See ya around, Meghan.” He ambled off after Mitch.
Amy and I took the rail station back to our wing. The whir and hum of the subway were things I hadn’t experienced before. Amy was right, though. It was fast.
Back in her office, Amy propped her feet on her desk and leaned back, crossing her arms behind her head. Long, red curls swirled down her back. It reminded me of satin ribbons.
“Okay, let’s talk about the virus. Tell me what you know.”
“All of it?” I tried to loosen my skirt as I sat upright, my back ramrod straight.
“Yeah, I’m curious what someone knows who doesn’t work here.”
The chair I sat on, opposite to her desk, was similar to the chair in the lobby. Hard. Unforgiving. An image of Davin flashed through my mind again. It seemed inconsequential that a hard chair and tight skirt bothered me when he had been gassed to unconsciousness mere hours ago.
“Any day now,” Amy said with a smile.
Clearing my throat, I clasped my hands. “Makanza originated in Africa a little over ten years ago. It began as a strange viral outbreak in the jungle that nobody could identify. It spread quickly, infecting entire villages and communities. Within a month, the entire continent had outbreaks in every country. By that time, it had also emerged in Asia. Then Europe. Then here. That was all before anyone knew what we were dealing with. The Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization scrambled, doing everything they could to control it, but since they didn’t know what it was or how it spread, their attempts were futile.” I paused, wondering if this was what she meant. “Is this what you’re wanting me to tell you?”
Amy nodded. “Yep. You’d be surprised how wrong people are about Makanza, since the MRI tries to keep all info a secret. I’ll correct anythi
ng you tell me that’s inaccurate.”
“Okay.” I rubbed my hands on my skirt. My palms were a sweaty, icy mess from having to speak like this. “By the time Makanza reached the U.S., only two months had passed since the initial outbreak. Martial law was put into effect, twenty-four hours a day, two weeks after the Manhattan Disaster. Following that, our borders closed. Air travel and trade stopped. The high mortality rate frightened everyone. The major news broadcasters said it was one hundred percent fatal, but that was before we knew about the Kazzies.” I paused again, remembering what today was. September 3, the anniversary of the First Wave. The day the first American died from Makanza.
The day our country changed forever.
“Considering only 1 in 85,000 people survive Makanza, it can seem like one hundred percent so I can see why the news reported that,” Amy said. “Makanza is the only virus ever known to be that deadly. Go on.”
I cleared my throat. “Things got a little better the second year when the government created the Makanza Research and Response Agency and the Makanza Research Institute, but it still took that entire year before anything was learned about the virus. It was too hard to study.”
“Do you know why that is?”
“My professor hypothesized that it was too fragile outside of the human body.”
“That’s correct. It can only survive on surfaces for around ten minutes, yet it’s still extremely infectious. A brush of your hand across a table and then bringing your hand anywhere near your face is enough to infect you. Not to mention, it’s also transmitted via droplet. If someone sneezes within six feet of you, you’re a goner. Over ninety-two percent of people that come into contact with it are infected.”
“I didn’t know it was that high.”
“Most don’t. There’s a reason the MRI doesn’t want the public knowing the facts. As you remember, panic and chaos ruled our country in the first year, the second year not being much better. The less the public knows about how truly frightening this virus is, and how little we still understand it, the better. We need to make the public feel safe, make them feel that we’re controlling the virus, not the other way around.”
“Right,” I said uneasily.
“Did they teach you anything about the actual virus in training?”
“Only the basics.”
“Tell me.”
“Makanza isn’t like any virus we’ve known. It can be transmitted from host to host through all possible methods: inhaled, ingested, from mother to child, and through sexual contact. It’s also not very selective in the cells it infects. Most viruses attack a particular cell in the body, like Hepatitis B which infects liver cells, causing those infected to die of liver complications, or HIV which infects the immune system, or measles which infects lung cells, and so on. Uniquely, Makanza infects almost all cells in the human body. No other virus does that—”
“Right . . . kind of,” Amy interrupted. “It is somewhat selective, depending on what strain you’re infected with. Remember how I told you there were forty-one strains?”
I nodded.
“Each strain targets different cells, but as a whole, Makanza can infect everything, so in that aspect, you’re right.”
For a brief moment, my icy palms warmed as science dominated my thoughts. “Really?”
“Yep. We believe it’s an RNA virus, given its characteristics, but since it only survives outside of the human body long enough to travel to a new host, there’s no way for us to know more. It literally disintegrates in the sterility of a lab. Both sterile water and saltwater break it down.”
I frowned as that implication set in.
Amy just smiled. “What else do you know?”
I wracked my brain for anything else but came up blank. “Um, that’s it.”
“So you don’t know the incubation period?”
I shook my head. “The things I’ve heard are contradictory, so no.”
Amy clasped her hands in front of her and sat forward, her feet making a thunk when they landed on the floor. She tucked a wayward curl behind an ear.
“I’ll fill you in then. After coming into contact with Makanza, it incubates for twenty-one days before a person exhibits symptoms. However, a person is contagious eighteen days prior to symptoms. That’s essentially why it spread so quickly. People didn’t know they were sick until weeks later, so they kissed people goodbye, shook hands when they met, touched surfaces in public, and so on. It spread everywhere. Hence, why so many died so quickly and why our government mandated everyone stay quarantined in their homes until it was under control.”
I remembered that time all too well. “That was a weird first year.”
The military had brought food to people, leaving it on doorsteps. Businesses shut down unless the government decided a particular business was critical for survival. If it was, the business ran on a skeleton crew. School was via internet only. Teachers set up “class” in their living rooms, live streaming to students at their personal homes.
That entire year had felt like a prison.
“Where were you living during the First Wave?” Amy asked.
“Vermillion. You?”
“Here, in Sioux Falls.”
“Hmm.” I hadn’t thought about that first year in so long. It wasn’t a happy time.
Amy checked her watch. “Crap, we should get moving. Ready to head back to the lab? I want to show you how we study the virus.”
I nodded. The sooner I got into research, the better. The entire reason I’d spent the last six years working to achieve the degrees necessary to work for the MRI was to make a difference.
We needed a vaccine. All of our lives may depend on it.
SEVENTEEN HUNDRED ROLLED around faster than I thought it would. Before I knew it, my first day at the Compound was almost over.
I said goodbye to Amy and walked toward the offices for my meeting with Dr. Roberts. I paused outside his door. Sweat dampened the blouse under my suit jacket. I took a deep breath. Forcing myself to raise a hand, I knocked.
“Come in!” a sharp voice called.
I tentatively opened the door and stepped inside.
Dr. Roberts sat at his desk. It was an impressive six-foot long behemoth, with two chairs in front of it and a huge window behind it. The view through the window made me pause. Lush green grass stretched all the way to the Compound’s outer perimeter. The sun shone overhead, the sky an endless blue. I didn’t realize how much I missed the outdoors until I saw it.
“Please, sit down.” Dr. Roberts waved at a chair.
I snapped my gaze away from the window and sat on a chair in front of his desk. I tried not to look around, but it was hard not to. His office was huge. In addition to the desk, a full couch, bookcase, and bar sat in the corner. The décor was browns and blues without a single personal item anywhere. The office was masculine and cold.
Just like my boss.
Dr. Roberts leaned forward and clasped his hands together. Sunspots speckled the backs of his hands. I couldn’t gauge his expression. “Did everything go all right today?”
“Yes, I think so.”
He eyed me, his gaze cold and calculating.
I tried not to fidget, but his stare made my palms sweat.
“I’d like to hear how your first day went. Do you have any questions about how things work here?”
The hard gleam in his eyes told me he was really asking if I had the stomach for how things worked here. Perhaps this was his way of addressing what I witnessed.
I swallowed with some difficulty. “No. Amy’s done a good job of explaining everything.”
The gleam stayed in his gaze. An aching ten seconds passed before he looked away. Finally, as if satisfied by what he saw, he nodded. “Excellent. In that case, I’d like to further discuss the research you did in grad school that earned you one of your Ph.D.’s.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. My Ph.D. thesis had been on RNA viruses and genomic sequencing. I had no probl
ems talking about that.
“Of course.”
IT WAS ALMOST six when I stepped into the parking lot. I’d never felt so relieved to be outside.
Since it was the beginning of September, the temperature was mild. I took a deep breath of warm air. Someone must have mowed the Compound’s expansive lawn. The scent of freshly cut grass wafted in the breeze. The air that settled around me was like a cloak of normalcy. It was a much needed tranquilizer after the day I’d just had.
My steps sounded on the pavement as I walked to my car. It took roughly thirty minutes to get through security before I hopped onto the frontage road to I-90.
I opened my window. A breeze trailed in. The sweet smell of fresh air helped clear my head. I never minded the stale, processed air that circulated through labs, but perhaps that was because I could always leave. A few steps from my bench lay the freedom of the outdoors, but the Kazzies didn’t have that.
They’d be locked up, potentially forever.
My shoulders slumped.
I thought of Davin again, being gassed to unconsciousness and how nobody had batted an eye. For the past six years, I’d wondered what it was like inside the Compounds, for the people who’d contracted Makanza and survived, but whatever my imagination had come up with, that was not it.
I was about halfway home when my cell phone rang. The image on the screen got a groan out of me. It was my mother. Reluctantly, I answered. “Hello?”
“Meghan, where are you?” Her voice dripped with annoyance.
My mother often reminded me of a cross between The Secretary of Defense and Martha Stewart. She could sound incredibly diabolical while also sounding like she’d just pulled a pan of freshly baked cookies from the oven.
It was a voice that always made me sit up straighter.
“Driving.”
“I hope you’re almost here. Your father and I have been waiting for over twenty minutes.”
I slapped my hand to my forehead. I’d completely forgotten they’d wanted to take me out for dinner. The big celebratory night after my first day. “Right, just heading there now. Luigi’s, isn’t it?”
She mumbled an affirmation then paused. “You should have called, darling.”
The Complete Makanza Series: Books 0-4 Page 12
