The cafeteria, cramped and dim, felt like a cave. We’d eaten military MREs—mushy beef Stroganoff, squeezy cheese on crackers, and apple jelly from tubes. Zach had fired up a trio of Bunsen burners, and we clustered around them now, roasting marshmallows on sterilized test-tube cleaners. I gripped the bristle end, letting the marshmallow impaled on the handle catch fire. I like mine charred.
It was early-morning late. I’d already explained the basics of my and Patrick’s crazy genetic freakishness to the scientists, who’d listened with a mix of skepticism and wonder. Zach and Laura had peppered us with questions all the way through.
Yes, our DNA is designed to replicate a viral vector on a massive scale and release it.
Yes, the virus we release is engineered to reproduce inside the Hatchlings, triggering them to pass it from one to the next until there’s a sufficient concentration to reach around the globe.
Yes, a secondary benefit of this dispersal is that it will wipe the Harvester pollen from the air, making the planet safe for humans.
And, of course:
No, we can’t guarantee that your viral vector will work precisely the same way.
“But this is seriously advanced biotechnology,” I said. “Think about it. The Rebels set up the dispersal mechanism in our DNA years before even knowing what specific viral vector they’d have to inject into us. I’m guessing it’s a pretty plug-and-play setup.”
Laura said, “We can’t stake two children’s lives on ‘plug-and-play.’”
Alex sat on a bench with her hands wedged under her thighs, palms down. Her shoulders were drawn up by her ears. She did not look happy.
“What better options are there?” I asked.
“Better than having two of you explode yourselves?” Zach said. “I can think of several.”
“Like what?” Patrick said.
Zach’s mouth bunched, making his beard ripple. But he didn’t have a reply.
I started tentatively, “Look, I’m not saying we will do it, but if we did do it, what would be the most effective way?”
Zach leaned forward and blew out his flaming marshmallow. “Well, you’d want to get to a high altitude in the middle of a dense population. You’d need the initial effect to be immediate—infecting a bunch of others quickly is the best way to ensure the virus’ll spread throughout the city. Once the entire city is infected, our algorithms show that the air concentration will be sufficient to carry to neighboring cities. And from there we hit wind streams, and off we g—”
“Zach?” Laura said. “Not helpful.”
“Oh. Right.” He chomped down on the marshmallow, then turned bright red and let it fall from his mouth onto the floor. “Sorry. Hot.”
“Perhaps we should table this discussion,” Laura said.
Alex blew out a shaky breath.
For a while we chewed and stared at the neat blue flames. Except for Zach. He was regarding us.
“I always wanted to have kids,” he said. “Especially if they turned out as cool as you guys.”
Laura looked at him, and her eyes were puffy and sad. “Maybe someday you still will.”
He made a little noise in his throat and spiked another marshmallow on the makeshift skewer.
Alex finally lifted her head. “Why do you think this happened?”
“As in a cosmic why?” Zach said. “I doubt that any of us can offer a better answer than you guys could.”
Laura said, “We do know that the fossil record shows five major extinction events where at least half of the planet’s species died off.”
“That is what we’re staring in the face,” the scientist next to her said. “Extinction.”
Patrick said, “Unless we can stop it.”
“The worst part has been watching what it does to us,” Alex said. “How it takes over our bodies.”
Zach made another of his little thoughtful noises.
“What?” Alex said.
“You assume you’re in charge of your body now?” he asked.
“Of course I am,” Alex said.
“Can you make it stop growing? Sprouting hair? Growing fingernails? Can people with Type 1 diabetes decide to make insulin?”
“At least our brains are still our own,” Alex said. “Our thoughts.”
“Are they?” Zach smiled. His tone wasn’t malicious in the least. You could see he loved this kind of stuff. “Can delusional schizophrenics control what’s coming into their heads?”
“But they’re sick,” I said.
“More readily definable as such. But I’m not.” He shot a smile at Laura. “Not diagnosable at least. But when I get anxious, I perseverate—obsess on stuff, I mean. When I get scared, I can’t just force myself to think happy thoughts. Some of that is learned, sure, but some of it is genetic. Hardwired into my brain. We’re not as in control as we’d like to think.”
“You know what Alex means,” Patrick said. “The way spores take over people. It’s not natural.”
“Ah.” Zach raised a finger. “And here we arrive at naturalistic fallacy. Just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s good, right? Cancer is natural. Earthquakes are natural. Animals eating their young is natural. Antibiotics are not.”
“That’s assuming that there’s even a distinction between natural and unnatural,” Laura said. “If humans are natural and Earth’s resources are natural, then how could we make something unnatural? Why is, say, nuclear waste any different from a beaver dam or bird droppings?”
“Fair enough.” Zach stood up and walked over to a row of big lockers against the wall. “But my point is, the Harvesters aren’t doing anything to us that doesn’t happen all the time in nature.”
“What are you talking about?” Alex said. She was getting flushed, ovals of pink coming up under her cheeks. Her spiky hair shot out in all directions, and she looked tough enough that I wouldn’t have wanted to take her on right now.
“Brine shrimp,” Zach said. “Also known as sea monkeys. They’re transparent. Until they get infected by tapeworms. The tapeworms make them turn a vibrant red and gather in clusters in the water. Why? So they’ll be spotted and eaten by flamingos. You see—this species of tapeworm can only reproduce inside flamingos. So they reprogram the brine shrimp to suit their own purposes just as the Harvesters reprogrammed human adults by turning them into Hosts.”
“And,” Laura said, “just as we were hoping to re-reprogram them with our viral vector.”
Standing by his locker, Zach started to don a puffy white suit. “The examples are countless. There’s a tiny worm that invades crickets, grows to adult size, and turns the crickets suicidal. The crickets seek out the nearest body of water and drown themselves. Then the grown worm wiggles out. Why? Because the worms have to be in water to mate.”
Zach pulled on a giant boot. He was on a roll now, and it was clear that when he got on a roll, no one could stop him. “The emerald cockroach wasp stabs a cockroach with a stinger sense organ.” He looked over at us. “Just like the Harvester Queens have. Except the wasps use theirs to feel inside the cockroaches’ brains. They inject venom into specific brain areas that take away the cockroaches’ motivation to move of their own accord. Then the wasp walks the cockroach to its lair by one of its own antenna like a dog on a leash. It lays eggs inside the cockroach, and when the offspring hatch, they devour the cockroach. They even eat the organs in a specific order that guarantees the roach will stay alive until the larva can become a pupa and spin a cocoon inside the roach.”
Alex made a gagging gesture with a finger.
Zach was now ensconced in his airtight suit up to his neck. He held a helmet under one arm. He looked like a mix between Neil Armstrong and the Pillsbury Doughboy. “Which raises another interesting question. We love to talk about free will. But is there any such thing? Is the infected cockroach still a cockroach? When does it stop being a roach? When does it become part of the wasp?”
“Like the Hosts,” I said. “They became part of the Harvesters.”
“They did. We’re looking at good old-fashioned parasitical warfare.” He tugged on his helmet and secured the latches. It was completely clear, giving him 360-degree sight lines. He spoke into a wire microphone that floated before his chin, his voice coming through clearly. “Which is why we need to ready our defenses to kick some Hatchling ass.”
He started to shuffle out. “I gotta fix that blockage in the saline-mist line on the east wall. Be back in fifteen.”
“That’s fine, Zach,” Laura said with a grin. “It’ll give the rest of us a chance to speak.”
He flashed a thumbs-up and waddled out.
Laura turned to us. “He’s excitable,” she said.
“That’s okay,” Alex said. “We like it. Everything’s felt dead for so long, it’s nice to see someone with a spark of life in him.”
Laura fiddled with her locket. “He does have that.”
One of her colleagues called her over, and they began discussing supply inventory. That gave me, Patrick, and Alex a moment to huddle in relative privacy.
“We have to talk them into letting us use their viral vector,” I said.
“Or steal it,” Patrick said.
“Either way we’ve gotta get our hands on one of those syringes and get down to the city center.” I stared at my brother. “I’ll inject myself. You go back for JoJo and Rocky.”
“We both take it,” Patrick said. “You remember the odds for success. We both have to do it, and then Alex goes back for them.”
“Do I get a vote?” Alex asked.
“No,” Patrick said at the same time I said, “Yes.”
She looked from my face to his. “You Rains are beyond impossible.”
A loud chime sounded—some kind of alert—and then Zach’s voice came in over the loudspeaker unit. “Uh, guys? I think we got a problem here.”