“No. Phones are down. The websites I used for digital dead drops are too.”
Desmond could read William fairly well—Peyton had certainly inherited some of his mannerisms—and could see that he was skeptical. Desmond knew time was running out—for Peyton and for so many others. They needed to make a plan, and quickly.
“Okay,” Desmond said, “let’s try to put it all together. We know the Citium released the virus. We know they have a cure. Let’s assume they’ve manufactured a stockpile.”
“Controlling the cure would effectively give them control of the world,” Peyton said.
“Not if we find it first,” Desmond said. “We find the cure, we stop them.”
He walked to the corkboard. “Rapture Therapeutics. Rook Quantum Sciences. Rendition Games. Phaethon Genetics. Labyrinth Reality. CityForge. Charter Antarctica. Those are my companies. They were Citium projects for sure. The cure could be housed at one of these locations or at another Citium company.”
“It’s possible,” William said, “but unlikely. I think the cure will have been developed and manufactured somewhere way off the beaten path. Outside an urban area, probably in the third world, where satellite coverage is minimal.”
“The Isle of Citium,” Peyton said. “In your journal, you said the Beagle stopped there periodically. It fits.”
William nodded. “It’s certainly a candidate, but not my first choice, for several reasons. One: whoever controls the Citium knows I’m still alive—and that I know about the Isle. Two: I’ve been monitoring it via publicly available satellite imagery. I haven’t seen any activity.”
Avery spoke up. “For locations that are considered uninhabited, those satellite images might only be updated every two or three years. Annually at best. The chance of spotting a supply ship arriving or leaving would be low.”
“True,” William said. “That’s a reason to suspect the Isle. My final reason is more practical. The Isle is exceedingly hard for us to investigate. It’s halfway around the world. Getting there will take us a long time, and will probably require refueling—and that’s the easiest issue. If, in fact, the Isle is where the cure was developed and manufactured, it will be extremely well guarded.” He motioned to the group. “We are four people. They’d know the moment we landed on the Isle, and we’d likely be facing a very large defensive contingent.”
“We could make contact with the UK government,” Peyton said.
“True,” her father replied. “But convincing them to believe what we’re saying might be a challenge—if they listen to us at all. They’re likely struggling to survive. We need to act. We need proof before we go to any government for help.”
“Let’s back up,” Desmond said. “Are there any Citium projects or companies that deal with infectious diseases or could be related to starting an outbreak?”
“Not during my time within the organization. If I had known any Citium members were doing anything even remotely like that, I would have turned them over to the authorities, and I’m not the only one. In fact, some of us were working specifically to prevent an outbreak or act of bioterror.”
“How?” Peyton asked.
“It was Yuri Pachenko’s project. I wasn’t privy to the details, but I know he was designing what he called an adaptive antivirus: an agent that could be trained to recognize a virus and bind it, neutralizing it in the body. That might be the Citium cure.”
“Yuri Pachenko,” Desmond said. “He recruited me to the Citium.”
William froze. “So he’s alive.”
“He was in 2002 anyway. That’s my last memory of him.”
“All these years, I wondered if he had died in the purge.”
“Is he an ally?” Peyton asked.
“Perhaps,” William said. “Whoever controls the Citium now may have taken Yuri’s research and completed it. Or perhaps the cure is something else entirely. Yuri may be dead by now.”
Desmond noticed Avery eyeing him. Thanks to his comment about Yuri, she now knew that he had recovered his memories—and hadn’t told her. Her expression was unreadable, somewhere between nervousness and anger—or possibly betrayal.
He tried to steer the conversation back to the task at hand. “What about Rapture Therapeutics? They were doing research into bacteriophages with the potential to eliminate brain plaques in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Could it be related?”
William thought for a moment. “I don’t think we know enough yet. The pandemic is certainly part of a larger end game—the ultimate outcome being the Looking Glass. How Rapture ties in isn’t clear to me.”
“Maybe there’s a way to find out.” Desmond held up his cell phone. “There’s the location from the Labyrinth Reality app. My childhood home in Australia. What if the information we need is in one of my memories located there?”
Avery spoke quickly, as if eager to shoot the idea down. “That’s a pretty big leap.”
“I have to agree with Avery,” William said. “Furthermore, the location is a problem. It will take us a great deal of time to get there—and it’s remote. If the plane is low on fuel, we could be stranded. I think it’s too far away. And we have a better candidate.”
William walked over to the laptop in the kitchen and opened it.
“Five years ago, I bribed an IT employee at an international shipping company. I gave him the names of the Citium subsidiaries and shell companies I knew about. He provided records of any shipments paid for by the organizations or shipped to or from their locations. At first, I thought it was a bust. But one location intrigued me.”