by Jason Parent
Another guard followed at his heels, the NBA center Dante had seen in the hallway, completely useless after one of his coworkers had been attacked by Romanov. His arms hung low from the weight of a giant lantern-thing he carried. He was sweating profusely, and his eyes kept shifting their focus, scanning the area for only he knew what. When his eyes met Dante’s, they passed over him without a second glance. But when they landed on the maggoty things on the wall and floor, he squealed and backed away, clearly terrified.
Stearns appeared at the doorway, propped up by Belgrade. A younger woman – Indian and in her late twenties, Dante guessed – scooted past them and crouched near the guard Dante deemed most likely to wet his pants.
“Sampson,” Stearns called.
The guard with the lantern set it down and looked Stearns’s way.
“This woman works for the doctor we contacted about the potential release of the viruses into the center. They cleared the woman who was out cold when we got in here and that asshole over yonder as noncontagious” – he pointed at Dante – “though I say we shoot the asshole anyway.”
“If you’ll just permit me….” The woman who had followed Stearns in pushed her way past him and headed toward the machine Sampson had carried.
Stearns cleared his throat. “Yes, of course.” Addressing Sampson, he said, “Your job is to give this woman whatever assistance she needs. Her name is Anju Duvale—”
“Denali,” Anju corrected.
“Whatever,” Stearns said, sneering. “Ms. Denali thinks she can tweak that scanner so that we can search out and clear the building of any infectious agents.”
Anju sat cross-legged in front of the giant lantern-thing and tinkered with it. “I will need to reconfigure a few things and—”
“Do what you need to do, ma’am. Sampson, if she doesn’t need you, send a video feed up the air vent after Kelly torches it and those…things…crawling all over it. Scan the room to make sure it’s clear once the good lady here has it up and running. Incinerate everything you can.”
Sampson, nervous and fidgeting, nevertheless nodded.
“Good,” Stearns said. “Kelly, try not to burn the whole damn place down, will you?”
Kelly smiled and laughed. “I can’t make any promises, partner.”
Stearns didn’t smile back. He looked at Dante, who would have given Stearns the finger if his hands weren’t chained behind his back.
“Johnson,” ASAP’s fearless leader said without taking his eyes off Dante, “bring this dickhead with us. After my wounds are taken care of, I plan on giving him some of his own.”
Chapter Fourteen
What the fuck? She blinked repeatedly until a film over her eyes began to dissipate. Where am I?
Clara closed her eyes and had almost drifted back to sleep when she snapped herself up straight. My room? How’d I get here?
She was sitting in her wheelchair, staring at the cold, blank wall of her room. Raising her hands before her eyes, she stared at them and trembled. Am I infected? What happened to that man?
The more awake she became, the more she filled with fear. “Hello?” Her room was empty. She wasn’t sure why she had called out. A vague memory of someone talking to her.
My mother?
“Are you all right in there, Ms. St. Pierre?” a deep voice called from the hallway. Clara didn’t know who the voice belonged to, but she knew the flat, robotic tone of an ASAP man when she heard it.
“You’ve been cleared for visitors, but you must remain confined to your quarters until the extent of your infection can be determined.”
Infection? Clara’s breath caught in her throat. “If I’m infected, what am I doing back in my room?”
“Doc says you’re not contagious.”
Clara frowned. “What doc?”
The man in the hall didn’t answer. She rolled quietly toward the door, hoping he’d left so she could leave and figure out what the hell had happened. As she neared, she saw the shadow his boots cast through the crack at the bottom of the door.
She sighed. So…now what?
Clara gasped, remembering. She had been standing. She had kicked that man. And she had felt pain when he’d clawed up her leg. Narrow tears ran through the denim at her calf and above her the back of her knee, but she could see no wounds beneath. In fact, her legs felt strong, as they once had so long before. Slapping them, she felt a lively sting. She wondered if – no, I can…I can stand up right now. Maybe.
She dug her nails into the arms of her chair, squeezing until all the pink vanished from her cuticles. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. One foot at a time. She grabbed her pants just over her left knee and lifted her leg, removing her foot from its footrest and lowering it slowly to the floor. Her motions were controlled, unlike her breathing or her heart’s rapid beating.
She smiled, but her confidence was fleeting. The idea that the sensations she’d been feeling were somehow real, not some vile false-positive side effect of her newly acquired disease or some cruel, phantom limb-like deception, gave her pause. But there it was, the ground beneath her sole, her foot firmly planted. She wondered, though, if it could support her weight.
She lifted her right foot and lowered it to the floor.
A knock came at the door.
Clara sighed, long and cleansing, simultaneously disappointed and relieved. She hadn’t been ready to try, not really. She doubted whether she would ever be. What if I fall? What if I fail?
The knock came again, and she huffed then lifted her feet back onto the rests. False hope is worse than no hope.
She pushed her chair closer to the door. “Who is it?”
“Um, hi Clara. It’s, um, Jordan…Jordan Phillips. You know, the dork who showed you his flower garden?” A high tittering laugh resonated through the door, followed by silence then incoherent mumbling. “Anyway…I just wanted to check in on you and see if you might need anything.”
“Just a second,” Clara said, immediately regretting it. She didn’t want to see anyone at the moment, least of all that peculiar American ball of clumsy handsomeness, Dr. Jordan Phillips. And how could she? What if I’m infectious? She couldn’t let him in, not when there was so much left to learn about Molli.
Stop making excuses, she scolded herself. You know damn well you’re not going to infect anyone. And she did know, was quite sure of it actually, though she had no idea what had led her to such a summary conclusion – not science, that was certain. But the fact that she was outside the clean room at all suggested someone else had agreed.
You’re just…you’re just a damn chicken.
She set her jaw and grabbed the cloth over her knees, yelping as she pinched her skin in the process. The sound escaping her lips had been one of surprise, not pain, or rather surprise at the sensation of pain. It hurt. She could still feel it. A smart, stabbing sensation tingled in her leg, where no feeling of any kind had been present for months.
And the feet themselves came off the floor easily, too easily, as if they’d come up on their own volition. Clara didn’t trust them.
Without further hesitation, she covered the remaining distance to the door, unlocked it, and swung it open. Outside, a tall man in a pressed green cardigan under a wrinkled and soiled lab coat shuffled his brown-loafered feet. He pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose as he slowly raised his head. The last time she’d seen him, he’d been wearing only a Speedo and had double the machismo, triple the confidence, and quadruple the easy charm. Now, he looked lanky and awkward, uncomfortable in his own skin. She half expected him to pull out his collar in some cartoonish exaggeration of anxiety.
Still, his discomfort did wonders for her own nerves. Funny, that. She laughed, covering her mouth.
At the sound of her giddiness, Jordan’s easy smile returned. His hands were hidden behind his back, and he brought them forward and revealed
a dozen flowers.
“For you,” he said, bowing graciously as he extended his arm toward Clara. He maintained eye contact almost the entire time, only looking away when Clara’s eyes grew big.
She couldn’t keep looking into his eyes for long either, blushing as she turned away. The way he’d been looking at her, his eyes smiling yet burning with intensity, the way a man looked at a woman – he was so unlike most men, those who saw her as a cripple first, a woman second. Cripple. She grunted. How she hated the word. But despite all the politically correct bullshit force-fed her via education since day one of grammar school, ‘cripple’ was the only word she would use to describe herself.
She rolled her shoulders, letting the weight of the word roll off, then accepted the flowers into her arms. “They’re beautiful,” she said, thinking that was what she was supposed to say. She knew little about flowers and was fairly certain that was the first time anyone had given them to her since she’d been diagnosed with MS. Then, it had been a boyfriend, who didn’t stick around. Showed his true colors. Did me a favor. Telling herself that never made it hurt less.
The memory made her think little for the perfumed plants. At best, they were little more than a way of saying, “I pity you.” At worst, they were an empty gesture entirely. She wondered what they were for Jordan. He didn’t look at her with pity. But maybe he just hid it well.
“What’s your angle, Dr. Phillips?”
Jordan upturned his palms, revealing empty hands. “No angle, Clara. I saw a beautiful woman with a brilliant mind undergo a rather awful day, and I thought to myself, ‘Jordan, if you can bring a smile to her face on a day like today, maybe, just maybe, she’ll give you the honor of being your dinner guest some evening.’ Now, maybe I was fooling myself, but…I know this great place two corridors north and about seventeen east. They have the best microwaved burritos this side of a frozen tundra.”
“Fantastic day-old doughnuts, too, I hear.” Clara rolled her eyes and smirked. “Where are my manners? I’ve kept you in the doorway long enough. Come in, come in!” She rolled backward, giving him plenty of room to get by. “Have a seat anywhere you’d like. We have a desk chair and a bed….”
Clara gasped and covered her mouth as heat rose in her cheeks. She hadn’t meant the comment the way it sounded. At least, she didn’t think she had.
Jordan laughed it off, but she thought his face reddened, too. He took a seat at the desk.
She buried her nose in the flowers. The buttery-sweet smell tickled her nose hairs while the silky white petals tickled her cheek. Four purple-tipped stalk-things, the name for which she couldn’t remember, sprouted from each flower’s center. Clara really didn’t like anything about flowers, but the gesture…. Maybe that had been beautiful.
“What do you call them?”
“Clara.”
She stared at him blankly, speechless.
“No,” he said, erupting with laughter. “I’m just teasing. We haven’t given them a scientific name yet. They are a new species of erythronium, though they grow much larger than the largest of previously known species. They’re from the seeds we found in the dig. Their growth rate is exponentially faster than other members of the lily order, but that seems to have no effect on their longevity. It’s almost as if these flowers are made up of some Superman hormone that spurs growth and maintains health even under harsh conditions.”
“Or maybe they have a talented botanist tending to their every need.”
Jordan smiled. “You flatter me. But these babies are low maintenance. They did all this growing mostly on their own. And wait until you see them tomorrow.”
Clara laid the flowers across her lap. “Thank you. I mean it, but I’m afraid I have nothing to put them in.”
“I thought of that.” Jordan pulled a cylindrical beaker from his lab-coat pocket. “It’s not much to look at, but it should do the trick. Tiger Lily isn’t going to die on my watch.”
“Tiger Lily? So you have named it? Not very original.”
“It’s only temporary. It’s not too late to call it Clara, if you’d prefer.” He laughed.
She didn’t. “You’d better not.” She stared at the beaker in his hand. “But I have no wa—”
“I thought of that, too.” Jordan pulled a bottle of water from his other coat pocket. He shook it, and the water became cloudy. “My own special blend. This stuff’s like spinach to Popeye.”
“Who?”
“He’s an old American cartoon character who…. Never mind, it’s silly.” Jordan twisted off the bottle’s cap and poured the liquid into the beaker. He pointed at the flowers. “May I?”
“Oh, sure.” Clara handed the flowers back to Jordan. He placed them in the beaker then arranged them with care until they conformed to some secret standard he wasn’t sharing with the rest of the world. He placed the makeshift vase on her nightstand and wiped his hands on his coat.
“There. Perfect,” Jordan said, not looking at the flowers.
“Thank you.” Clara felt the blood rise in her cheeks yet again and fidgeted. She crossed her arms over her legs and bit into her lip, trying to think of what to say next. Despite her awkwardness, she craved contact, a sort of desire budding in her that she hadn’t felt in many years. God, I hope he can’t tell.
But maybe a part of her hoped he could. Just a little. She bit into her lower lip, the pain having the opposite effect of what she had intended.
“So….” Jordan rubbed his palms into his thighs. “How are you holding up?”
“Well, you know, almost murdered…exposed to an unknown and potentially lethal microorganism…. Does it get any better than this?”
“I suspect, in your line of work, it’s just another day at the Shakhova-Mendelsen Siberian Research Center.”
“Truly, my job isn’t all that glamorous or dangerous. Usually. But for a high-security, top-of-the-line outpost, this facility is proving to be fairly easy for maniacs to penetrate. I mean, two security breaches in one day?”
“Well, they’re treating you with caution. Round-the-clock guard posted outside your door, ready to shoot you if you try to leave. I’m surprised he let me back in.”
“Back in?”
“I agreed to stay with you and warn them if anything strange started happening. I figured you’d want to wake up to a friendly face over one of those trigger-happy morons.”
A sheen covered his eyes as they filled with something wild. His stare lingered just a little longer than it should have. He took a deep breath. “Well, after the morning you’ve had, the important thing is that you’re safe, relatively speaking, that is. If there is anything I can do—”
“I’m fine.” Clara wasn’t sure why she had blurted that. Defense mechanisms, she supposed. A good-looking, thoughtful, intelligent man was there trying to be her white knight, but she couldn’t let him. If it wasn’t bad enough that she couldn’t accept help from anyone, the fact that he showed interest in her must have been evidence of something wrong with him. I’m my own goddamn knight, the only one I’ve ever had. She sighed. And my worst enemy.
Jordan cleared his throat. “Any theories why you’re…um….”
“Not like Sergei Kobozev? Not murderously insane? Not boiling over like a medieval serf with syphilis? Not dripping skin faster than a leper?”
Jordan’s nose crinkled as if the odor of rotten fish had just wafted by. He frowned. “Something like that.”
She shrugged. “I’m not even sure how I got out of the lab.”
“How much do you remember?”
“Most, I think. I remember…being attacked, Sergei trying to get at the sample. Mon Dieu! Il l’a bu! Mais pourquoi?”
Jordan squinted then blinked. He said nothing.
Clara shook her head. An eyebrow rose. Oops. “I lapsed into French, didn’t I?”
“Yup.”
“Sorry
. That happens sometimes when I get excited.”
“And are you?” The corner of his mouth curled. “Excited?”
Clara pouted. The question tasted sour. She looked away as she felt heat again flashing in her cheeks, wondering what experiences or lack thereof had caused her to grow into such a prude. Then again, it hardly seemed the right moment for such blatant flirtation. Then again, no time ever seemed right for her. Her social skills and the interactions they invited ranged from socially awkward to the functional equivalent of a loud fart in a quiet elevator.
She pretended as if she hadn’t heard him or, at the least, didn’t understand his meaning. “I’m anxious, and if I’m being honest, a little afraid.”
“A little?”
Since she’d woken, she had been ignoring the elephant in the room as best she could. She could ignore it no longer. “I’m fucking terrified! But I only have two choices: sit here and lament my fate while I nurse my wounds or get back in the lab and see what makes me so different. If Molli’s running rampant through the research center, I shouldn’t be wasting any time and should be looking for the cure. I am in a unique position where I may be carrying the answer somewhere in my genetic code.”
“It’s okay to be scared, Clara. You were just attacked by a coworker without reason or provocation. I’m no psychiatrist, but I have to imagine that would rattle the strongest of us.”
“He drank Molli, Jordan! He grabbed the petri dish and poured her down his throat, never so much as taking a moment to consider that doing so might be detrimental to his health, never mind everyone else’s. Where’s the reason in that? The man was a scientist, like you and me. Logic, rationality, sensibility…hell, good ol’ common sense are supposed to be tools of the trade. A clear, systematic approach, step-by-step cause-and-effect analysis, the scientific method – these are what govern our research and our actions. We don’t go slurping amoebas out of petri dishes.”
Jordan grunted. “Um, silly question: Who or what is Molli?”
“The virus, damn it! He drank the fucking virus!”
