Project Deliverance, 50 miles east of Khartoum, Sudan
Dre cracked open the door to the darkened bedroom. A small lamp on the bedside table was on, and a veil covered the light, which cast a reddish glow over the room.
“Can I come in?” Dre said in a soft voice.
“Okay.”
The woman who answered sat at the head of the bed, her back against the wall, her knees drawn up to her chin and her arms wrapped tightly around her legs as if she was trying to make herself as small as possible. She had long dark hair plaited into a rough braid and wrapped around her neck like a comforter. Under other circumstances, Dre would have thought her very pretty.
But now, her large, dark eyes were red-rimmed and watery, and her round face was a blotchy mess.
Dre sat on the edge of the bed. “How are you feeling?”
The woman started to cry again. “I’m sorry,” she said between sobs. “I just can’t stop. I can’t believe they’re all dead.”
“It’s okay. I’m Andrea Ramirez. My friends call me Dre.”
“Lakshmi.” She took a deep breath and held it, then dragged her forearm across her eyes. “I will stop crying now. I promise.”
“If you’re feeling up to it, maybe you could tell me what happened?”
Lakshmi nodded and swallowed hard. “Last night, Talia called me to her room. She said when JP got back he was going to be very angry and she wanted me to be safe. She was so scared. I’ve never seen her that scared.”
She bit her lip. “I’ve known Talia for a long time—we were at undergrad together. She’s had a lot of tragedy in her life. Her parents were killed when she was very young and she’s always been a bit of a loner. We were really close, like sisters.” Lakshmi scooted closer to Dre and sought out her hand.
“Everyone went downstairs and when Talia came back up, she was alone.” Lakshmi let out a shaky breath. “When I asked her what was going on she got very upset. She asked me to make us both a cup of tea. The next thing I knew, I was waking up and there were men in bio suits with guns and—”
Lakshmi’s voice broke. Dre squeezed her hand. “I think we were here for that part.”
“I knew JP was a hard man,” Lakshmi said, “but I never thought he would…”
“It’s okay, Lakshmi. There was nothing you could do.”
Lakshmi closed her eyes. “That’s just it. I knew there was something wrong and I didn’t do anything. I was too afraid. I let my friends down.”
Dre felt the words like the ache of an old wound in her own chest. The feeling of helplessness. The feeling of knowing you should do something, wanting to take action with every muscle in your body—and still being frozen with fear.
“I know what you mean,” Dre said. “I had … I had something happen to me. My friend was hurt and I didn’t do anything to help her. I was too afraid.” Dre felt her own tears starting to well up. “I still think about it. I’m still ashamed, but I honestly couldn’t do anything. I don’t know why … and I hate myself for it.”
Lakshmi scooted across the bed and hugged Dre. “That’s exactly how I feel,” she said, her words muffled in Dre’s shoulder. “I was afraid to say anything. Now all my friends are dead.”
Dre wrapped her arms around the woman and let her weep. Her own pain felt sharp and raw, as if the scar tissue formed by time had been ripped away.
The racking sobs slowed, Lakshmi’s breathing evened, and she pulled her face away from Dre’s neck. The wet material on Dre’s shoulder chilled in the air-conditioning.
Lakshmi used the edge of her shirt to dry her eyes. “Thank you,” she said. “You made me feel a lot better. I want to do my part to help.”
Dre smiled, feeling a little buzz of pride at being able to help her.
“What exactly was going on here?” Dre asked.
“Project Deliverance,” Lakshmi said as if that explained everything. “Our mission is to rid the world of the worst possible bioweapons. We are—were—the Red Team.”
“Red Team?”
“There are two parts to Project Deliverance. We make the viruses and the Blue Team creates vaccines for them. You know, like in a war game.” Lakshmi’s eyes were starting to clear, and her face had a look of bright innocence.
“I want to make sure I have this right,” Dre said. “There are two parts to Project Deliverance? There’s another site? Do you know where the other site is?”
Lakshmi shook her head. “That would defeat the purpose of the war game if we knew anything about the other site. JP was the only person who knew where the other site was. As soon as we developed a new virus, he would deliver a sample to the Blue Team. The first two were variations on the Ebola virus, and the third was Pandora.”
“What is Pandora?”
Lakshmi brightened. “Pandora was the culmination of all the work we had done so far on Deliverance,” she said. “It was a true chimera virus: an Ebola strain combined with a paleo-flu virus to make it airborne and far more survivable. It’s magnificent.”
“Paleovirus?”
“That’s the best part,” Lakshmi said. “A paleovirus is something that comes from an ancient sample, like a mummy, for instance. JP found a dig site near the Arctic Circle and got us samples. The benefits of using a paleo variant is that it’s not in anyone’s database yet, they have to start from square one. And, modern humans don’t have immunity from such ancient pathogens.”
Dre fought back a feeling of nausea at the way Lakshmi reeled off deadly viruses like she was trading baseball cards.
“When you say ‘check out a sample,’” Dre said. “What does that mean exactly?”
“We deal with some of the worst viruses in the world here, Dre, so we have an elaborate inventory-control system,” Lakshmi said. “The only person allowed to check out samples is Dr. Lu.” She stopped, bit her lip. “I did it again. The only person allowed to check out a sample was Dr. Lu. He set up the sample-handling system and only he could access it.”
“And what happened to the samples?”
“We sent one to the Blue Team and kept the others here.” Lakshmi met Dre’s gaze and her expression grew thoughtful. “There was no Project Deliverance, was there? No Blue Team.”
Dre shook her head. “Those samples you mentioned. They were used in Yemen on innocent people.”
The other woman clenched her eyes shut. Her chin trembled with the effort of containing her emotions. “That’s why Talia was so afraid. JP was a monster.”
Dre licked her lips. “He used them … on small villages. Then destroyed the evidence.”
“Oh my God.” Lakshmi covered her face with her hands. “How could I have been so stupid? All of us—we wanted to believe him, so we did, and now…”
Dre put her arms around Lakshmi. The woman’s body quivered with suppressed emotion. “I’ll talk to the corpsman and get you something to help you sleep.”
“No.” Lakshmi sat up straight. “I want to help. The CDC will need someone who knows the systems, knows how this place works. That’s me.”
She scooted off the bed and stood. “I only want one thing.”
Dre got up. “What?”
“These people were my friends. When they cremate the bodies, I want to take their ashes home to their families. I owe them that much.”