Dr. Oystein’s smile is a thin, trembling thing, and it doesn’t stay on his lips for long, yet it hits me harder than Dan-Dan ever did.
“Oh, B,” he sighs. “I’m so sorry.”
“What the hell do you have to be sorry about?” I shout. I want him to be angry, to curse me, attack me, howl at the heavens while his senses dissolve.
Dr. Oystein sits again and wipes blood from his face. He looks drained.
“I lied,” the doc says quietly. “I fed you and the other Angels misinformation, knowing a day like this could come, hoping to trick you into doing my bidding. I was slyer than the offspring of a fox and a snake. I had to be.”
“What are you talking about?” I groan, looking to Master Zhang in case he can make any more sense. But he only shakes his head mutely and turns to Ingrid, who’s still screaming and trying to pick ants from her eyes—they’ve burrowed through one eyeball and are hard at work on the other. Master Zhang studies her, decides she’s too far gone to help, and drives his fingers through the side of her head, silencing her and releasing her from her agony.
“I mixed up the truth in all sorts of ways,” Dr. Oystein says as Owl Man comes limping towards us, moaning painfully. “I won’t go through the list and correct every piece of erroneous information that I dangled in front of you. That would take too long. You can piece most of it together later, in your own time. It’s enough to know this for now—although Albrecht was the more ingenious of us, I was always the master of the viruses.
“When I originally told you about Clements-13 and Schlesinger-10, I said that I had created both of them. That was true, except I created the zombie-destroying virus first, as I told you at our meeting earlier today. I said nothing of my breakthrough to Albrecht or Zachary, while I worked on manufacturing a virus which would be as lethal to humans as that one was to the undead.”
The fighting in the room begins to die down as word spreads of what has happened. The mutants and babies back away from the living and gather round Mr. Dowling and Kinslow–Claudia is supporting him, as his leg seems to have been broken in the fighting when I wasn’t paying attention–while the surviving humans regroup and move in closer, bewildered but respecting the cease-fire.
“When Albrecht found out what I’d done and what I was working on, he went wild and attacked me,” Dr. Oystein continues. “That’s when I accidentally injected him with one of his mutant strains and sent him veering down the path of madness. Alone after that, but undeterred, I continued working on the human-killing virus. I was close to perfecting it when Zachary betrayed me.”
Dr. Oystein smiles wanly at Owl Man, who has come to a standstill and is staring at me miserably.
“My nephew thought he was doing good,” Dr. Oystein murmurs. “He had not yet come to see that we needed to cleanse this planet of its human tyrants. He found out that a sample of Schlesinger-10 was still intact—I had kept it to run tests on. He didn’t know where I had stored it, so he orchestrated attacks on all of my laboratories at the same time. Alas, I hadn’t hidden the vial as cunningly as I thought. Zachary found it and delivered it to Albrecht.”
“Hold on,” I stop him. “This doesn’t make sense. You said you hadn’t perfected the human-destroying virus yet.”
“That is correct,” Dr. Oystein says calmly.
“So what did they steal?”
“The zombie-eradicating virus. They knew I would never dare release a virus targeted at humans as long as they had hold of its counterpart.”
“But… no… this is wrong,” I mutter. “Mr. Dowling had Schlesinger-10, the human-eliminating virus. He shared his thoughts with me. I know for definite that it was Schlesinger-10.”
“Yes,” Dr. Oystein nods, and then he smiles that sickening smile again. “That was my most cunning lie, the one for which I am most apologetic. When I learned of Albrecht’s fascination with you, I felt I could perhaps use you to retrieve the zombie-annihilating virus from him. But you would not have fetched it for me if you’d known what it really was. So, when I told you about the viruses, I switched names.
“Schlesinger-10 is the zombie-killing virus. Clements-13 is the human-killing virus. Not the other way round, as I pretended.”
My eyes bulge. “But that means…”
“Yes,” Dr. Oystein says sadly. “When you took my vial of Clements-13 from me and smashed it open, you condemned humanity to extinction. You have done my job for me, and sentenced every living man, woman and child to an untimely end. That is why, even in my most triumphant moment, I am sorry—because I have turned you into an all-destructive goddess of death.”