by Kyla Stone
He sniffed, his sharp gaze traveling over her face, her hair, her dress, his mouth twisting in all-too-familiar contempt. “I thought things would be different this time. Maybe you just have too much of your mother in you. Must you always ruin everything you touch?”
Every old feeling of shame, fear, and unworthiness surged through her. She had done her best for years, tried desperately to be perfect. But it hadn’t mattered. None of it had ever mattered. She had never been enough to earn his approval, his love. Tears pricked the backs of her eyelids.
You aren’t that girl anymore, a glimmer of a voice whispered deep inside her. She’d fought too hard, lost too much to go back. Her father’s approval no longer determined her worth.
Only she decided that.
Amelia drew on every reserve of strength she had. She forced herself to lift her chin, refusing to cry in front of him.
His expression darkened. He smiled, but it was a dangerous, slippery thing, sharp-edged as a knife. “You, Amelia, are the pinnacle of my life’s achievement. From working on you, I discovered the nanobots that I used to successfully manufacture BioGen’s cancer cure. Then the universal flu vaccine. Now this, the cure for the world’s most devastating plague.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. For their meaning to settle into her brain. “You’ve—you’ve been experimenting on me?”
“Safely, I assure you.”
“You…” But there were no more words in her head. Shocked disbelief jarred through her body, her bones.
All these years, he could have been putting anything into her pills and auto-injectors. He had been willing to risk her brain, her very life, for his work, for yet another billion-dollar treatment, for more fame and more power. She hadn’t expected this, not even from him.
Acid burned the back of her throat. She felt sick. “What if something went wrong? What if you poisoned me or—”
“Do not doubt me!” her father thundered. “I knew exactly what I was doing. I knew the nanos were the key to everything. And look, the entire scientific community was wrong. I was right! I did this!”
She stared at him, stunned into silence.
“Do you know what your mother was?” her father asked, abruptly changing topics. He was impassive, completely impervious to her pain. He seemed not to care that he’d just blown her world wide open. “Before I picked her out of the trash and set her at the table with kings?”
Amelia couldn’t move. Dizziness wavered at the corners of her vision. She was dazed, shaken. Her brain couldn’t process it all.
Declan stepped toward her. His voice was hard, sharp as steel. Every word cut in places she didn’t expect, didn’t have armor for. “Both her parents starved on that street drug Silk when she was twelve. She was a street rat until she hit puberty, and a scout from the syndicates noticed her.”
“No,” Amelia whispered.
Declan sneered. “Your mother was a whore. Did she neglect to tell you that part?”
Acid burned the back of her throat. He was upset with her. As punishment, he was trying to hurt her, to break her.
She wanted to say that she didn’t care, that it didn’t matter, to throw his insinuations back in his face. But how could she? She knew his words were the truth. Her mother never spoke of Amelia’s biological father. She never spoke of her past.
Because of this. Because her biological father was nothing but a john. Amelia blinked back tears. Her fingers tightened around the neck of the violin, the case still lying open on the table in front of her. “That doesn’t change who my mother is. That doesn’t change anything.”
Declan ignored her. “I once believed it was fate that brought us together. I found out later that she’d studied every research paper ever written on Dravet’s syndrome. That’s how she found me and my research trials. She worked the convention until she spotted me. She’d had a child by then, an infant only three months old. A baby already dying.
“When she told me about the infant and its prognosis, I confess that I was intrigued. She was desperate. I was smitten both by the scientific possibilities and by her charm and demure beauty. While I worked on developing a treatment protocol for you, we came to an understanding. She gave me her hand in marriage, and I saved her daughter.
“It was a business arrangement.”
His intense gray-blue eyes held Amelia in his magnetic gaze. She couldn’t look away. He saw that he had hurt her. He smiled. “You, my child, are my first great achievement, the one I could never tell a soul about. But the nanotech breakthroughs established by your treatment led to the breakthroughs with the BioGen cancer cure, using nanobots as vehicles to successfully target cancerous cells. And they enabled the Hydra virus.
“The medication I developed for you proved efficacious for epilepsy. I knew the nanoparticles would work the same way, only with viruses. Hemagglutinin is the surface protein embedded in the lipid membrane of the viral envelope, responsible for the attachment of the virus to specific receptors on a host cell surface. It facilitates the fusion of the viral envelope and the cell membrane. The virus injects its genetic material into the cell cytoplasm and unpackages its DNA, using the host cell to replicate its viral nucleic acids and proteins. The nanos I developed bind themselves to the hemagglutinin so the viral envelope can no longer fuse to the host cell receptors. Even with minor mutations, they remain effective.
“I introduced insignificant levels of our engineered virus into your system, training the nanos to recognize the Hydra virus signature to strengthen and multiply your white blood cell count.
“I wanted a vaccine before National Health Day, but the powers that be insisted on moving the date up. I was unable to finish my work with you. And then, of course, the virus underwent reassortment with the bat-flu and mutated into a highly virulent, highly contagious pathogen like nothing the world has ever seen. The Grand Voyager was hijacked, derailing my plans to formulate a cure. The rest of the story, you already know.”
Her emotions warred within her, a tangle of fear and love, doubt and anger, and a dozen others she couldn’t name. She leaned against the table, shaking.
“Do you feel all right?” Her father’s brow furrowed in concern. “You are taking the medication I gave you in the correct dosage?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
She wanted to hurl his medication back in his face, to scream at him, to pummel him with her rage and never stop. She reigned in the anger, the shock and betrayal and hurt, forcing it all to some deep, dark place inside her.
He thought she was back under his control. He wanted a meek, malleable doll.
She had to make sure he continued to believe just that. “May I lie down, Father? I feel very tired.”
“Of course. You must rest.” He swiped his Smartflex. “I will call security to escort you to your room.”
Harper and Logan entered the penthouse, their faces impassive, their gazes staring straight ahead. Amelia grabbed the bouquet of flowers, careful to cradle them to protect the recording device even as her fingers trembled.
He’ll hate you forever if you do this.
She knew what she needed to do, had to do. Yet it still felt like some giant hand wringing out her insides, twisting her heart in its fist.
She thrust the flowers at Harper. “Will you please carry these?”
“Of course, ma’am,” Harper said demurely. Her expression never changed. Logan studied them both, his green eyes betraying no thought or feeling.
“I’m glad you’re here, Amelia,” Declan said from the doorway. “I have my daughter back.”
31
Micah
“What happened?” Micah asked eagerly as soon as Theo, Fiona, and Kadek had slipped inside the biodome. It was ten p.m. and dark outside, well past curfew. “Did anyone see you?”
“Of course not,” Fiona scoffed, pulling off the black hood of her sweatshirt and shaking out her mass of red hair.
Kadek held out a sleek white thumb drive as he shrugged a duffle bag
to the floor. One end featured a tiny camera lens with a speaker. “Amelia came through. We got it.”
A thrill of hope—and fear—thrummed through Micah. “Is she okay?”
“Harper says she’s fine,” Fiona said, shoving her hair behind one ear. “They’ve done a butt-load of tests and scans on her and started injecting experimental serums into the infected. Preliminary results seem to be positive.”
Theo thrust out an industrial-sized bag of gummy worms. “Hungry?”
Micah’s stomach roiled with too much anxiety to eat anything. He and Silas had been stuck inside the biodome for four days, going stir-crazy and trying their best not to throttle each other. It was a losing battle. “What’s the plan?”
Silas leaned against a glass wall, his arms folded across his chest, his expression sullen. “Please tell me it’s happening tonight.”
Kadek flopped down at a rusty table. “We’ve almost got it figured out.”
“What exactly does that mean?” Silas asked.
“I can get us inside and through the first three security levels.” Theo drummed his fingers against the arm of his wheelchair. “But to access the network requires security clearance level four.”
“And that’s going to stop you how?” Kadek said.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have the skill set to override the biometric protocols…maybe with more time. I mean, I could upload a sophisticated Trojan horse virus into their system which runs by itself and will continually search for a shortcut into the network, but it’ll take days to infiltrate the system’s security protocols—”
Kadek sighed. “Theo. The easy way.”
“Easy?” Fiona chuckled. “When do we ever do things the easy way?”
Kadek lifted one narrow shoulder. “Why do it the hard way when the easy way might work even better?”
“Operative word: might,” Fiona shot back, but she was grinning.
“You’re breaking my heart.” Theo raised his hands in surrender. “Okay, okay. You win. Not sure if you’d call it easy, but I do know a faster way. You’re not going to like it, though.”
“What?” Micah asked, pushing down his anxiety. “We don’t have much time, so fast is best.”
“We have to kidnap someone who’s a security level four.”
Kadek’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “No way. It’s too dangerous.”
“Not if we’re adequately prepared,” Fiona said from her perch on the edge of a faded armchair. She pulled up the building’s schematics on her holopad. She bit her lip as she studied it. “And we nab the right mark.”
Kadek frowned. “Who?”
“I have a guy in mind,” Theo said around a bite of gummy worm. “Level four clearance. A real techy dork. His name’s Herald Mather. He’s got no family. He works long hours, way past everyone else. I hacked his schedule this morning. He’s worked twelve-hour days five days a week for the last month, no exceptions. He’ll still be in the building after eight p.m., with no one else but the security guards, a few drones, and the sani-bots. I’d bet my Marvel comic book collection on it.” He gave a wistful sigh. “If I still had them.”
“So we just grab him and put a gun to his head?” Micah asked dubiously.
“The biometric scanners detect increased heart rate and other stress indicators,” Kadek explained. “Over a certain threshold, the door auto-locks. It won’t open for anybody but the head of security. Trust me, we don’t want to mess with that guy.”
Silas let out a torrent of curses. “That’s your big plan? Sounds like it’s gonna crash and burn before it even gets off the ground.”
“We can drug him,” Fiona said.
Micah shoved his glasses up the bridge of his nose with his thumb. “How will we do that?”
Theo tossed a gummy worm into his mouth. “Fiona, our most talented thief, moonlights as a medical technician at Camp Quarantine, specifically the confirmed infected wing.”
“The Sanctuary studies the infected for a vaccine or a cure or whatever,” Fiona said as she stole one of Theo’s gummy worms. “They take blood and tissue samples and inject them with potential serums. None of them have worked. But the scientists have tested other treatments, attempting to slow or eliminate symptoms. We’ve been dosing end-stage Hydra patients with a modified version of Serenaphin—more commonly known as Silk.”
Micah’s eyes widened. “The street drug?”
“It has its uses. You know how the virus releases a surge of adrenaline near the end? It makes people really aggressive, gets them up off their feet even though their bodies are literally eating themselves at that point. It’s the virus’s last-ditch effort to spread itself—spraying blood through coughing, et cetera.”
“Like zombie Energizer bunnies,” Theo chimed in.
Fiona frowned. “Not really.”
“Silk calms them.” Micah thought of his father, who’d starved to death from his addiction to Silk. It had stolen his appetite, his emotions, his motivation, even his will to live at the end.
“Right,” Fiona said. “It slows their heart rate, impedes adrenaline and cortisol, essentially making them temporarily docile. Kind of like a mod.”
Kadek whistled, drawing their attention. “We’re getting off topic here.”
“Bottom line,” Fiona said with a surreptitious glance at Silas, “if we drug this Herald guy with Serenaphin, he’ll be docile enough to pass the biometric scanners and get us through fourth-floor security.”
“Perfect,” Theo said.
“How long will it take for you to steal some?” Micah rose to his feet. He was anxious to get started.
These people seemed nice. They were funny, smart, and he could tell they genuinely liked each other. In another life, he’d like to be friends. But here, now, with Amelia in danger inside these walls and his brother in danger outside them, he only wanted one thing: to end this thing as swiftly as possible.
Fiona pulled a vial encased in protective foam out of her pocket. She beamed at Silas, who only stared back at her, stone-faced. “Already two steps ahead of you.”
Silas shifted, hunching his shoulders and plunging his fists deep into his pockets. He looked unimpressed. “Are we just going to waltz through the front door, then?”
“Maybe ten steps.” Theo wheeled to the far corner and yanked back an old tarp Micah hadn’t even noticed to reveal a neat stack of cobalt-blue uniforms. “Welcome to technical support, lady and gentlemen. It’s mostly bots who do the labor, but they always send at least one human to supervise.”
Micah studied the three of them. Kadek looked nervous, but Fiona and Theo seemed confident in their abilities to pull this off. Was there something about this whole thing that he was missing? It all seemed too easy. “What about the cameras? Surveillance drones? And your Vitalichip implants. Don’t they track your every move?”
“Way to rain on our parade, man,” Theo said good-naturedly. He tapped the side of his head. “Great questions. I can tell you’re the thinker.”
Sulking in his corner, Silas grunted in derision.
Theo wheeled over to the ancient desk. He pulled a small black bag from his jacket pocket and plopped it on the dust-strewn surface. He opened the bag and pulled out a dull, slate-gray cuff, thinner than a Smartflex, about an inch wide. He slipped it over his hand and clamped it tightly to his right wrist, just over the embedded microchip. He tossed identical cuffs to Kadek and Fiona.
“We can cloak them with lead,” he said. “We could completely block the signal so we can’t be tracked, but prolonged inactivity sends an automated alert ping to security, who immediately send their thugs to check things out. We’ve figured out that we can sneak out at night when the AI analyzing the incoming data assumes we’re sleeping anyway. We’ve tested it up to sixty minutes. Any longer than that, and they release the goons. BioGen is already making a second gen upgrade that will nullify all of our hard work—”
“One day at a time, Theo,” Fiona chided gently.
Theo sighed. “T
his girl thinks I talk too much.”
“You think too much,” Kadek retorted.
Theo just rolled his eyes. “So, we have to get there, do our thing, hoof it back on foot, and reactivate our chips within an hour. I can hack a transport for the way there, but the way back we’ll need to go separate ways on foot.”
He turned to Micah and Silas. “Now, you two are in the wind, so to speak. As long as we keep your faces out of sight of the facial recognition software on all the cams, you’ll be okay. A hoodie and special digital-masking glasses will help for any we can’t avoid. That’s Fiona’s expertise. Once we’re in the building, Kadek will dub the footage and erase the building cameras.” He gave them a self-satisfied grin. “See? Easy, right?”
“You guys think you’re up to this?” Kadek asked, eyeing Micah and Silas skeptically, clearly uncertain whether to trust them.
The feeling was mutual. But neither party had a choice. The stakes were too high. The possible reward too great. Both sides had to risk it all.
“We are,” Micah said.
Silas pushed himself off the wall. He cracked his knuckles, one by one. Everyone watched him. He looked up, his eyes glittering. “We sure as hell aren’t here to shake hands and kiss babies, now are we?”
32
Willow
Willow woke with a start. She sat up fast, her sleeping bag bunched in her fists, her heart pounding. She blinked in the darkness, waiting for her eyes to adjust.
She was inside the tent. They were somewhere in the middle of the wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills. The tent flap was unzipped. Finn was outside, keeping watch while she and Benjie slept. She’d been sleeping—dreaming about triple-decker burgers dripping with real melted cheese, not the soy crap—but now she was wide awake.
Benjie squirmed beside her. She could barely make out his shadowy form. He rubbed his eyes. “Lo Lo?”
