A tent complex stretched out in a grid next to a single long metal building. It reminded Peyton of the Dadaab refugee camps. A dirt airstrip lay nearby.
Desmond panned the map right, then south. Peyton leaned in.
What’s he looking for?
He stopped on a black mark in a brown expanse. She realized then what it was: the remains of his childhood home. The second location the Labyrinth Reality app had provided. It was his second backup, and it lay less than seventy miles from the camp. Why? Was it connected? It had to be; the coincidence was too great.
“The backup Labyrinth location is here,” Desmond said. “I wanted myself to go here, and now we know the Citium was shipping to this site. Even if, by some chance, those things are unrelated, we can follow two leads at once.”
William rifled through the pages in the folder again, scanning the address on each manifest carefully.
Peyton said, “What’s the matter, Dad?”
“This feels wrong. The location should be a port or a major shipping hub—not a relief organization.”
Avery eyed him. “Some of the pages could have been lost during our escape.”
William glanced away from the group. “True.”
“Or maybe we got the wrong file,” Desmond said.
“Well we can’t exactly go back and search again,” Avery said. “But we know they were shipping something to this site.”
“At this point, I think going to this site is our only move,” Desmond said.
Silence followed.
Peyton’s eyes met Desmond’s. She sensed that he wanted to see what was at his childhood home. She remembered going there with him, all those years ago, the pent-up emotions he had pretended weren’t there back then. She agreed with him: this was their best option.
“I say we check it out,” she said, staring at Desmond.
“Me too,” Avery said.
William nodded. He was still distant, lost in thought. Finally he stood.
“Right. I’ll set a course.”
Day 13
5,900,000,000 Infected
9,000,000 Dead
Chapter 94
Millen had been asleep for two hours when the announcement came over the loudspeaker.
“EOC shift personnel, report to Auditorium A.”
The tone was urgent.
Millen’s bedroom was a small office in the interior of the building. It was dark and cold, but it was quiet.
He turned on the table lamp, rolled out of the cot, and staggered to the desk where his pants lay. He pulled them on and rushed downstairs.
The auditorium was filled to capacity. Phil stood at center stage, working a laptop.
“All right, listen up. The White House has received another message from the Citium—a video. I’m going to play it now, then we’re going to discuss what we’re going to do about it. Please keep quiet.”
On the screen behind Stevens, the video played. Sick people stood in the streets of a city, in a line that stretched for blocks. Many coughed as the video panned past them. Some were in wheelchairs. Toward the front of the line, people had rolled their sleeves up. A man in a white coat with a Red Cross logo held a jet injector. He pressed it to each person’s shoulder, pulled the trigger, then changed out the single-use protector cap that covered the injector nozzle.
A woman seated at a table spoke to each person who’d been injected, typed something on a laptop—presumably the person’s name—then handed them a sticker.
The camera zoomed in on one of the stickers.
X1 Guéri
The subtitle read X1 Cured.
The camera panned around, showed the Eiffel Tower in the distance.
The scene changed. It was another city, with a similar line of people, their shirtsleeves rolled up as well. On a hill above them, crumbling stone ruins towered. The Acropolis. Millen recognized the Parthenon instantly. Athens.
A man’s voice began to speak over the images. He had a slight British accent.
“Earlier today, the people of France and Greece received the lifesaving cure for the X1-Mandera virus. We offered you the same cure. You declined. You sentenced your citizens to death so that you could stay in power. We are providing this video to give you one last chance.
“Do the right thing for your people. Save their lives.
“We ask very little. We seek a peaceful world, where no human can kill another, where science is the engine that turns the world, not greed, not war, not hate or selfishness.
“In the event that you require further proof, we have covertly deployed the cure inside your borders for you to confirm.”
The video changed. On screen was a white woman in her mid-forties. A teenage girl and a younger boy sat with her, a black background behind them. The woman faced the camera and spoke with a southern drawl.
“My name is Amy Travis. I live in Johnson City with my daughter Brittney and son Jackson. I was sick. So were my children. A man came to my house. Said he was part of a group of researchers called the Citium. They were testing a potential cure. I agreed to try it. I’m making this video because I want others to know that it works. I’m proof. So are my children.”
The video changed again. This time a young black man spoke. A woman sat beside him, and in her lap was a boy only a few years old.
“My name is Roger Finney. This is my wife, Pamela, and our son, Brandon.”
A voice off screen said something Millen couldn’t make out.
“Oh, yeah, we live in upstate New York, just outside Rome. We were given the cure. We signed the forms. Didn’t have much to lose. It worked for us. Felt better that night. Headaches and fever were gone. Cough cleared up soon after that.”
The screen faded to black, then began showing still photos from across America. Scenes of the cordon zones. Barbed wire across city streets. Buses loading and unloading people at the Astrodome in Houston and AT&T Park in San Francisco, canvas-backed trucks unloading supplies, National Guard troop carriers rolling through cities.
“This is your country right now. But it doesn’t have to be.”