chapter FORTY-THREE
“Vale still won’t see us,” said Kira. They were sitting in a small park—a cluster of picnic tables in a small grove of trees in the Preserve. Samm and Calix had returned in time for lunch, and Calix had abandoned them almost immediately to play a game of football with a larger group of teens on the field nearby. Phan was playing with them as well, and paused every few plays to cajole Kira and Samm into joining them, but Kira had too much to discuss, and welcomed the relative privacy. Samm, for his part, seemed even more quiet than normal, but Kira took this as a renewed focus on the task at hand. He insisted that Calix wasn’t hiding any secret motives, but said little else about their trip into the ruins.
“Vale is obviously hiding something,” Kira continued, “and even if we sit around waiting for him to give us the meeting he promised, he’ll probably just give us another runaround. He’s hiding something, and I don’t like it, and we still haven’t heard anything from Heron, and I’m sick of it. It’s time to go to the spire.” She glanced at it, a tall black peak jutting up behind the other buildings. “Phan took me around earlier, just kind of showing me the complex, and some of the buildings get pretty close to it. We could get most of the way there without arousing any suspicion and then, I don’t know, try to sneak in without anyone noticing. I honestly don’t know if anyone would even care—Phan said it was structurally unsound after the Partial bombings, but they don’t exactly seem nervous living next to it. They don’t really seem to think of it at all.”
“Is there a fence?” asked Samm.
“A low wall,” said Kira, “mostly made of junk and old furniture. They’re trying to keep the kids from wandering in by accident, but they don’t seem to have any active security—that’s pretty typical of this society as a whole. They don’t expect anyone to attack, or rebel, or break the law at all, and as far as I can tell, no one ever does.”
“And naturally this makes you suspicious,” said Samm.
“That would make anyone suspicious,” said Kira. “There is no perfect society—there’s always going to be unrest, or criminals, or something sinister underneath, making it run. Maybe Vale is using some kind of mind control to keep everyone in line. Like the link, but for humans.” Samm looked at her with a reasonable attempt at skepticism on his face. She smirked. “I don’t know, but it’s something.”
There was a cry of triumph from the field, and Kira looked up to see half the football players jumping in excitement. A young man was lying on the ground, moaning softly, the ball lying next to him, and Calix was walking away from what appeared to be a brutal tackle, a small dribble of blood on her cheek. Kira’s eyes widened in surprise. “Wow. I had no idea she was that intense.”
“She’s got some stuff to work through,” said Samm. He narrowed his eyes as he peered at the field. “I hope she doesn’t hurt anyone.”
“Now’s our chance,” said Kira, putting a hand on his arm. “Wait till they set up for another run, and then follow me. If we go behind these trees and left to that building, we’ll be out of sight before they even notice we’re gone.”
“And if somebody else sees us?”
“We’ve never been specifically forbidden,” said Kira. “If somebody sees us, we play the ‘new folks in town’ card and thank them for keeping us out of a dangerous building, then we regroup and go back at night. But if there’s even a chance we can get in now, I want to at least try.”
“Okay,” said Samm. “You armed?”
“Semiautomatic in the back of my waistband.”
“Ankle holster,” said Samm. “Here’s hoping we won’t need them.” They sat in silence, watching the game; Phan got on the line of scrimmage, ready to run, not pausing as he had so often to call Kira and Samm into the game. The rest of the players lined up as well, the quarterback called hike, and Kira and Samm slipped away. They were around the corner before the play had even finished.
“This way,” said Kira, and led Samm along the building toward the center of the complex. The spire reared up behind the building, so tall it was visible from almost anywhere in the Preserve. People said hello to them here and there, but nobody Kira recognized from her brief tour with Phan. She waved back, hoping no one would stop them for conversation, and no one did. Two buildings later they were at the edge of the large central clearing. Beyond them was the low wall, a mishmash of broken tables and filing cabinets and here and there a boulder or a fallen tree, and beyond that was the massive, blackened shape of the ParaGen spire. The outer wall was a lot like so many other skyscrapers Kira had seen—once covered with windows, now a checkerboard skeleton of shattered glass and dangling wreckage—but unlike those other buildings, this one had been directly attacked and then pounded with years of corrosive rain, and portions of it were blackened or twisted or pocked with grotesque holes. It was also shaped oddly, tapering into weird juts and angles that might once have looked modern and beautiful, but now only added to its strange, brooding menace. Kira could almost imagine she saw lights inside, and imagined for a fleeting moment that they were the ghosts of old office workers, still toiling endlessly in their forgotten tomb. She chided herself for being silly, and thought of more plausible explanations. Was the power that still ran the complex still running in the spire as well? What was left in there to be powered? The clearing looked blocked and overgrown, as if no one had entered the building in years.
“Heron was here,” said Samm.
“Was or still is?”
“The data’s too faint to tell,” said Samm.
“Now we know Vale’s hiding something,” said Kira. She looked around. “If we can make it over the wall, we’ll be completely hidden in the underbrush beyond,” said Kira. “We can probably get in without being seen.”
“It would be better to wait for night.”
“And have Phan and Calix tied to our necks again?” asked Kira. “This is the best chance we’ll ever have.” She looked around. “I don’t see anyone else—they’re all eating lunch, or playing football, or whatever these people do in this creepy place.”
“It’s called ‘living normal lives.’”
“And it could all just be a show for our benefit,” said Kira.
“Do you really think . . .” Samm shook his head. “Never mind. Let’s go.”
“I’m sorry about all this,” said Kira softly, feeling the sudden weight of their never-ending quest crushing down on her shoulders. “I’m sorry I dragged you into it.”
“You know I believe in this as much as you do,” said Samm. “Other people’s normal lives are what make our crazy ones worthwhile.”
Kira felt a flush of emotion. “I promise you that as soon as we’re done saving the world, we’ll eat lunch and play football.”
“Deal,” said Samm.
Kira looked back at the spire. “Ready?”
“Try to keep up,” said Samm. He looked around for observers, then looked back at the spire and narrowed his eyes. “Go.”
They sprinted across the open clearing, dodging the stumps of fallen trees that dotted the lawn. Samm reached the wall first, vaulting over into the tall desert grass beyond; Kira followed, dropping to the ground in the tall brush. They held still, listening for cries of pursuit or alarm, but Kira heard nothing.
Samm was panting.
“Are you winded?” Kira whispered. “I didn’t think you could even get winded.”
“We’re still weak from crossing the wasteland,” said Samm. “Our bodies aren’t functioning at peak capacity.”
“I’m fine,” said Kira.
“So am I,” said Samm. “Let’s go.”
They crawled on their bellies through the underbrush, staying out of sight below the tall grass. Samm seemed back to normal again, and Kira forged ahead, determined to reach the building as quickly as possible—hidden or not, they could still be discovered until they were inside and away from prying eyes. Soon she grew nervous, afraid that the slow pace of crawling was taking too long, and rose up to a crouch to take a peek above the grass. The Preserve complex seemed quiet and still. She dropped back to her hands and knees and scuttled forward more quickly, the building now nearly in reach. Samm followed, his face grim and determined. When they reached the building he was breathing oddly again, not panting but taking long, slow breaths.
“Are you okay?”
“I feel strange,” he said. “Exhausted, like I haven’t slept in days.”
Kira couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt. I don’t feel tired at all—was Samm really pushing himself this much harder than I was? Was I pulling so little of my own weight on this journey, and didn’t even know it? “Do you need to rest?”
“Not here,” said Samm. “We need to get inside.”
The tall brush extended nearly to the edge of the building, where they could enter through any number of floor-to-ceiling openings—giant windows destroyed in the Partial attack. Almost the entire ground floor was open around the perimeter, supported by a series of central pillars. There was nothing but reception desks and waiting areas; any records they could find would likely be in the offices above, and Kira spied a stairwell door standing partly open. She pointed it out to Samm, and he nodded, his chest rising and falling in slow, deliberate rhythm. She counted softly under her breath: “One, two, three,” and then they leapt up and ran, bolting across the rubble-strewn floor to the door beyond. Kira reached it first, several steps ahead of Samm, and when he staggered through, she slammed it shut behind him. He leaned heavily against the wall, gasping for breath, his eyes closed.
“I don’t think anyone saw us,” she said. “We can rest here for a minute before moving up.”
“If I rest, I’ll fall asleep,” said Samm. He struggled to open his eyes, but his lids seemed heavy and unresponsive. “Keep moving.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“We have to keep moving either way,” said Samm, “so it doesn’t matter.”
Kira tried to protest, to tell him that they could come back later, but he wouldn’t listen. “We won’t get another chance at this. I can make it.” He gripped the railings with his hands, one on either side, and raised a leg that looked as heavy as lead. Kira inserted herself under one of his arms, wrapping his hand around her shoulders, and put her own arm around his waist, helping him along. His breathing was deeper now, almost as if he were already asleep. His steps were arrhythmic, and sometimes it took him three or four tries to find the right height for a stair.
“You’re doing fine,” said Kira, though she knew something wasn’t right. What the hell is going on? “Just a few more.” She held him tightly, supporting almost his full weight as they climbed. “That’s right, just a few more.” At the top of the first flight of stairs she opened the door, and he collapsed through it onto the floor. The smell of earth and plants filled the air, and she saw footprints of cats and birds in the dust that covered the carpet. “Samm, are you okay?” It didn’t look like anyone outside could see them in this spot; it was as good a hiding place as any. “Samm, talk to me.”
“Not . . .” His voice was slow and weak, as if he had to force each word through a heavy screen, and they had no force left when they emerged. He rolled his head back and forth, opening his eyes as wide as he could, struggling to stay conscious. She waited for him to finish the sentence, but when he finally spoke again, it was something different. “Heron . . . here.” Another pause. “Asleep.” He turned his head toward her, but his eyes were dazed and unfocused. “Find . . . it.”
“Find ‘it’?” she asked. “Find what?” She shook him, whispering urgently in his ear, but nothing roused him. He’s asleep—he told me he was asleep. And apparently Heron’s here somewhere. Kira willed herself to use the link, to detect some sign of Heron’s data anywhere in the air around her. She’d never been able to use it at will; only in combat could she actually rely on it, when her adrenaline seemed to amplify its effect. But my adrenaline’s high now, she thought. This thing with Samm has me scared to death, and I’m not detecting anything. Are the combat pheromones simply stronger—or am I just designed to detect the combat pheromones and nothing else?
She checked Samm again, his pulse and his breathing. They were normal. Now that he’d stopped fighting and settled into sleep, his body functions seemed to have normalized. She stood up, trying to figure out what she should do next—should she stay until he woke? Should she leave him here and keep going? The latter seemed like the only viable option, but she didn’t like it—what if something happened to him while she was gone? She dragged him over to the wall and propped him up on his side, his back to the wall and his front held up by a pair of desktop computer towers she pulled from nearby cubicles. He was sleeping so soundly she worried that if he threw up or drooled he’d be too inert to react, and would choke to death. This would at least keep him safe from that.
It’s almost like he’s been sedated, thought Kira. But why would someone do that to him—and how could they have done it? Did Calix slip him a drug? Why drug him and leave? She shook her head. I can ask him more when he wakes up. Right now I’m here, at the end of our search, and I don’t know how long we have before they come looking for us. And if we leave now, Samm is right, there’s no guarantee we’ll have another chance to find what we came for. I have to find the records.
She silently apologized to him, and then rifled through the desks on the floor, searching for a directory or a map—some hint of where to start looking. Obviously the Trust wouldn’t be mentioned by that name anywhere, at least she didn’t think so, but she knew most of their names from the records they’d found in Chicago. She repeated them again in her mind: Graeme Chamberlain, Kioni Trimble, Jerry Ryssdal, McKenna Morgan, Nandita Merchant, and Armin Dhurvasula. My father. She found a small directory and scanned it for their names, but found nothing.
She decided to try another tack, approaching the problem from another angle: What clues had she already gathered, and what pieces did she already know? It took her a moment to align her thoughts; she had been so busy getting here the last few weeks and had thought of little aside from survival. She had to remind herself of the mysteries she was trying to solve. Dr. Morgan had been assigned to create the Partials’ incredible physical attributes: their strength, their reflexes, their resistance to disease, and their incredible ability to heal. Jerry Ryssdal had worked on their senses. Kira’s father had created the link, and the entire system of pheromonal communication. She still didn’t know about Trimble. Last of all came Graeme Chamberlain and Nandita, who had been assigned to the Failsafe project. The world-ending plague they had come to know as RM. They’d learned in Chicago that the Failsafe was designed to kill the Partials if they ever got out of hand—it had been requested by the American government, and mandated by the ParaGen executives, and that mandate seemed to be the defining incident that sparked the lead scientists to form the Trust in the first place. And somehow, when the virus finally appeared, it killed humans instead. That couldn’t possibly be what the Trust decided to do—she couldn’t allow herself to think that anyone, let alone her father and the only mother figure she had ever known, would willingly, knowingly, unconscionably destroy so many people. And Graeme had killed himself, which didn’t tell her anything but still left her deeply unsettled.
Still, she thought, the Trust had been fractured, even as they tried to make their plans. Dr. Morgan knew nothing about the expiration date, for example, but somebody must have programmed it into their DNA, someone with a plan. There were others, too, the names Morgan had screamed when she thought Kira was a spy: Cronus and Prometheus. Were they code names for some of the people on this list? Or new people altogether? And where did Dr. Vale fit into this?
Kira turned back to the directory, searching for anything that might relate to the Trust’s plan: expiration. Failsafe. Virus, virology, pathology, epidemiology—she searched for every synonym she knew. She searched for “laboratory,” for “research,” for “genetics,” she even searched for RM. . . . Wait. She stared at the directory. There was no RM, but there was an RD. Is that a reference to the virus? Maybe an earlier version of it? But there is no way something so secret would be here on a directory so general it doesn’t even have the lead scientists’ names. She remembered her confusion with the term IT, and how it had turned out to be an acronym: information technology. RD must be the same thing, maybe . . . reference database? Research database?
Research and development.
If the Trust were anywhere, they were there. But where is Floor C? The floors here are all numbered. She looked for a map, scrounging through every desk she could find, but on her third pass through the main hallway she stopped at the top of the stairs, staring not at them but at the doors beside them. Three sets of double doors, all in a row.
Elevators.
The Preserve had an ongoing, self-sustaining power grid. The elevators in the other buildings still worked. If they still worked here, finding Floor C would be as easy as looking at the buttons. Getting there would be as easy as pressing one. She stepped forward, her finger hovering over the call button. She pushed it.
Deep in the bowels of the building a motor hummed to life, and Kira felt the floor vibrate as the gears and pulleys turned. Clanks and groans echoed through the elevator shaft, and Kira stepped back as the door before her wrenched halfway open with a loud screech. The elevator beyond was only partly lined up with the door, leaving a wide gap at the bottom that plunged deep into darkness. Having power to run them doesn’t mean anyone’s been maintaining them for the last twelve years, Kira thought. It’s amazing the elevators still work at all. The doors tried to close, but had damaged themselves so much in opening that they couldn’t shut again. Kira hesitated in the doorway, trying to decide if she trusted the stability enough to climb in and look at the buttons. She peered into the pit below, seeing dark red lights at the bottom of a shaft that looked to go down at least seven stories. That’s five levels below ground, she thought. There must be one for maintenance, maybe two. And three full subterranean stories.
A, B, and C.
She decided to avoid the elevator, and instead peeked into the shaft and around the corners, searching for a maintenance ladder. She found one she could reach relatively easily, but she still had a moment of terrifying vertigo as she stretched out over the deep black pit. With her hands firmly on the metal rungs, she swung the rest of her body out into space, found the ladder with her feet, and began climbing down. Each floor was marked, and she breathed a sigh of relief when she climbed down past 1 and found A waiting below it. She kept going, stopping on Floor C, and searched for an exit. Next to the ladder was a maintenance door; she twisted the handle, and it opened smoothly.
The hallway beyond was brightly lit. The air was fresh and well circulated. Far away, a faint echo in the emptiness, she heard footsteps.
Kira’s heart caught in her throat, and she found herself suddenly paralyzed with fear. Was that Heron—was she already here? Or was it somebody else? Had they heard all the noise she’d made with the elevator? Was there one set of footsteps, or more? Were they coming or going? She didn’t know, and not knowing made her too afraid to move. After a moment she paused, forcing herself to think. No matter what it is, I should go through the door. I can’t just leave, and this could be my only chance to find out what I am. She hesitated, trying to psych herself up, wondering if there was a security system inside that would attack her. She hadn’t set off any alarms by opening the door. She took a deep breath and drew her handgun from where she’d hidden it in the back of her pants. She stepped through.
The hallway was bright, not just because of the lights, but because the walls and floors and ceiling were white, like a hospital. She could feel the faint hum of something through the floor, like the motor of the elevators but constant, like a background buzz. The power generator? she thought. Or an air circulator. There was definitely a faint breeze, neither hot nor cold but simply air in motion. She heard another cluster of footsteps, so small she thought it had to be just one person. She strained at the link, trying to see if it was Heron, but felt nothing. Kira fumbled in her waistband for her handgun, pulling it out and checking the chamber and magazine, making sure it was loaded and ready to go. She held it before her carefully, walking softly on the balls of her feet. She could hear somebody walking, but she was determined they wouldn’t hear her.
Floor C was a lab, far more intact than the upper stories. Whatever the Partials had done to this place, the destruction hadn’t penetrated this deep. Kira walked past offices and conference rooms, past laboratories and showers, past clean white rooms full of equipment she didn’t even recognize. Was this where Vale was making his cure? That would make sense; ParaGen would undoubtedly have the best genetic engineering equipment in the Preserve. Was this equipment the reason he said it wasn’t “portable”? Maybe it was Vale she could hear down here. Kira quickened her pace.
She heard the footsteps again, and as she drew closer she heard a voice, murmuring and indistinct, someone talking softly. Kira walked as quietly as she could, still wary of who she might find, or what he or she might be doing. Would they attack an intruder? Would they take her presence as a threat? What equipment were they using, and how were they using it? Would they kill her to protect their secret?
It doesn’t matter. I’ve come this far. I need to know.
She rounded the final corner, stepping into a vast room, and gasped. Before her in two long lines were ten metal tables, each bearing an emaciated, almost skeletal man. Snaking up from each was a cluster of tubes and cords and cables, some dripping nutrients into the bodies while others bore away what looked like waste or recirculated blood. Their faces were uncovered, but a small tube sprouted up from the neck of each figure, punching straight through the skin and curling up into the tangle of tubes that hung above them. In any other situation she would think they were dead, but she could see a frail rise and fall of their chests, see their hearts thumping slowly inside their fragile ribs. They were living corpses, unconscious and lost to the world. They looked like they’d been there for years.
“What’s going on?” she whispered.
“They’re Partials,” said Dr. Vale. Kira looked up to see him on the far side of the room; her pistol rose up almost involuntarily to point at him, and he raised his hands. “You wanted to know how I synthesize the cure,” said Vale. “I don’t—I harvest it directly.” He motioned toward the tables. “Behold: the cure for RM.”