Police car still there, slightly closer.
“Honey? Answer me!” Estrella stopped coughing now. Her mouth was closed, eyes tightly shut.
Is she breathing?
Ahead, the town proper began. Traffic was sparse, but directly in front of Daniel was a major intersection and a green light.
Then it turned yellow.
“Hang on,” Daniel shouted as he punched the accelerator.
Tearing through the intersection, Daniel heard sirens flare behind him. Blue light flashed in the rearview mirror. Then came the terrible sound of a crash. Daniel looked back to see the police car stranded in the middle of the intersection, black smoke already curling from under its hood where it had T-boned a beige pickup truck.
Daniel kept the pedal down, weaving his way through the few cars on the road. The crash bought him a few minutes perhaps, but reinforcements would arrive soon.
Behind him, Estrella was choking. He could see tears fighting to escape shuttered eyes, and her little body shook for air.
“Hold on, baby,” he said. “Hold on.”
Daniel pulled into the shadows of an alley next to a building at the address he’d been given. It was a small nondescript dingy-gray structure wedged between two others, which appeared to have been abandoned long ago. He pulled Estrella from the backseat.
“Oh God, oh God,” he said, holding her against his chest as he sped inside. Estrella offered no resistance to being carried, but no assistance, either. She felt limp. Waning.
“Hello?” Daniel cried.
No one out front. Just an empty counter, black plastic chairs, and a small bell. Daniel had seen a hundred waiting rooms, although usually they were packed. This one had no visible patients or receptionist.
“Hello?” he shouted again, slamming the bell with his free hand, refusing to set Estrella down. He hoisted her up against his shoulder, her lips cool against his neck.
“Just a second,” a male voice called from behind a slotted, swinging door behind the counter. Then came the sound of a toilet flushing.
“She doesn’t have a second!” Daniel rounded the counter and ran toward the swinging door, then froze.
A man in a short doctor’s coat came from the back, holding a gun. He seemed too young to be a doctor, maybe eighteen or nineteen, with striking good looks and curly red hair.
“Back,” he said, pointing the gun at Daniel’s chest. “Now.”
“What? No, my little girl, she—”
“I said back.”
Daniel complied, clutching Estrella. She wasn’t struggling to breathe anymore. Wasn’t moving at all. “My daughter is dying,” he said, tears streaking down his face. “I need help.”
“Why did you bring her here?”
“A man in Mexico City sent me. Asian. I have his card!”
The doctor’s eyes went wide and he tucked the gun into a holster under his coat. “Set her here,” he said, patting the counter.
“Can you help her?” Daniel asked. “The Asian man said you could, but no one knows what’s wrong—”
“Not surprised…but it doesn’t matter. If Mott sent you, then I can help.” The doctor knelt in front of the counter and pressed his thumb onto a dark pad on a small safe set in the base. The door hissed open, revealing a second, smaller safe within. The doctor lowered himself to face the second safe. The red-light glow of a retinal scan flashed, then a clunk sounded as the lock released. He removed a small bag containing a silver-tinged solution, thick as liquid mercury, which glittered in the light.
“Methuselah?” Daniel asked. Based on the seemingly homemade packaging, he guessed that this hadn’t come from any government facility or official agency. “Is it real? Where did you get this?”
“Oh, it’s real. I made it myself,” the doctor said, affixing a steel needle to a syringe.
Daniel’s jaw dropped. “But how?”
The doctor stuck the needle into the bag’s aperture and slowly drew the sparkling liquid into the syringe barrel. “I invented the stuff. Well, I was on the team, at least. Mott, the Asian gentleman you met, was, too. Then the government decided Methuselah was too important to be left to private enterprise. They took it from us.” The doctor returned the bag to the double safe and stood. He gently expressed the remaining air from the syringe so only the medicine remained. “Our laboratory mysteriously exploded soon thereafter. Many friends and associates died that day. Myself and Mott were listed with the casualties, and we didn’t contradict the report. Took that as a sign it was time to disappear.”
The needle primed, the doctor turned to Estrella, examining her wrist for a good injection site.
“But why are you helping us? Why my Estrella?”
“The people running the show think only the elite should live, and it’s time to ‘thin the herd.’ First step was Methuselah, but now they’ve shifted to creating diseases. Your little girl is one of their test subjects. That’s why no one knows what’s wrong with her.”
Daniel felt the world fall away. “They did this to her?”
The doctor nodded with a sad smile. “Others, too. But we’re going to turn the tables on them. Methuselah will keep Estrella alive, and with her blood I’ll be able to create a vaccine, so they can’t do the same to others. It’ll take some time, but big changes are coming—soon. Your little girl is going to play an important part in that. You should be very proud.”
Daniel looked at Estrella lying on the counter, so small. Beautiful, like her mother. He knew she would help people one day, but he never could have guessed this.
“Do it,” he said.
The doctor nodded and raised the needle to her wrist.
From outside, an enhanced voice boomed: “This is the police. We are conducting a building-to-building search for the fugitive Daniel de Montes, wanted for assaulting a Methuselite. If you know his whereabouts, please activate your security beacon now.”
The doctor looked over at Daniel. “You?”
“Please, don’t stop. My daughter—”
“If they find me helping you, they’ll arrest me, too. Then they’ll search the clinic. It will ruin everything.”
“This is the police…” repeated the message from beyond the clinic’s door. Closer now, maybe a few buildings away.
“I’m begging you,” Daniel said. “Give her the injection before it’s too late.”
“It’s already too late. I can’t expose the clinic. I’m sorry.” He slipped the syringe into his coat pocket and pressed a button under the counter.
More noise now, directly outside. Daniel could hear the scruff of boots outside the door and harsh voices.
Daniel lunged and grabbed the doctor’s gun from its holster. He raised and pointed it directly at the doctor’s head.
“What are you doing?”
“Promise you’ll take care of her,” Daniel said.
“What do you—?”
The front door to the clinic crashed open, followed by two large, dark-jacketed police officers brandishing laser pistols. The doctor jumped back at the sound, but Daniel held firm and kept the gun steady. The officers looked from Daniel to the doctor and back, then took aim at Daniel.
Perfect. Now if the doctor will just follow my lead…
“Drop your weapon!” one of the officers shouted, stooping into a crouch.
“Come any closer,” Daniel said, “and the doctor dies!” He meant the doctor no harm, and hoped the young man understood Daniel was providing cover. He would only have a second before—
The crouching officer opened fire, severing Daniel’s gun arm from the rest of his body at the elbow.
He collapsed to the floor in a heap, screaming and clutching his cauterized stump. The other officer ran forward and grabbed him with his Taser gloves, paralyzing him.
“You okay, Doc?” the officer who’d cut off Daniel’s arm asked, holstering his pistol.
Daniel grit his teeth through the pain and looked up to the doctor, trying to read his face or catch a sign.