The halls were dark in this section. Emergency lights halfway down the walls glowed red behind their hard plastic casings. The bucket made his arms ache from the weight of the food inside—packet after packet of dehydrated food brought back to life with water. Even though the food wasn’t meant for him, his stomach grumbled because he hadn’t eaten breakfast yet. The metal handle bit into his hands and turned them numb. He wished his brain would go numb, but it never stopped.
He walked down the hallway until he came to the next door. At head height there was an opening with a metal grate. The noises from the other side of that grate always disturbed him because they sounded so human even though he knew—they were chimps.
He banged on the door with his fist. The noise reverberated down the cement hallway. The chimp chatter increased until it filled the whole world.
He checked to make sure the two young chimps had gone into their feeding cage. He liked the chimps. They were usually caged in pairs or even trios. They would screech and chatter and play together, tumbling around on the ground because they had no idea how terrible the world was now. He envied them for that.
He slowly turned the steering wheel-like handle on the wall. He wanted this part of his morning chores to take as long as possible because he was dreading what came at the end.
Finally metal clanged shut on the other side. Everything smelled like monkey piss in this section even though their cages were open to the sky on the other side. He rested his hand on the door and grabbed up the bucket again, but then stopped and stared at his skin.
His uninfected skin.
Clear, smooth veins and bruising beginning to fade. His head was clear, his memories under control—though he would never forget how the double infection had made his brain betray him again and again.
They had put him under anesthesia and everything went blank for the longest time. He woke up and swore he heard echoes of someone screaming and they said it was side effects from the infection that would dissipate because they had cured him. They had the cure.
But it only worked for Feebs, not for Faints like his mother. It had something to do with blood and saliva and all the fluids that made his stomach feel queasy. He forced himself not to dwell on any of that. Maibe could be cured—if he could figure out how to escape with it. Whatever it was.
That was the problem. He had been cured of the Feeb infection, but he didn’t know how.
He opened the door, left the food, released the chimps from the feeding cage, then moved to the next one until he repeated the process over a dozen times. This was a chimp research facility back before the Lyssa virus even existed. The place had lasted all this time under Dr. Stoven’s care, all other research projects abandoned except for whatever might lead to a cure—and then Dr. Ferrad had showed up.
Alden closed the door and dragged his feet to the last door, using up a full minute to walk the ten feet. This one was the same size as the others, but there was only one individual inside it. A girl.
He looked forward to caring for the chimps, mucking out their cages, watching them play. He felt sorry for the Faints he helped take care of—a whole wing of them strapped to beds with drip lines and beeping monitors. They reminded him of his mother and the awful things his father had done to try to save her over the years. They reminded him of Maibe and how she slowly disappeared into herself. There were at least a dozen uninfected who ran the facility. He was allowed to interact with them now that he’d been cured. But there were Vs here too and the girl in this cage was one of them. The worst one.
He pressed his hand against the cold surface of the door and told himself to just get it over with.
There was a giggle behind him.
He dropped the bucket, the food spilling onto the floor. He whirled around and saw her. Kailyn—Dr. Stoven’s crazy brat.
“What are you doing?” she said, her voice high-pitched. She was maybe ten years old. Today she’d worn a pink dress like out of a Disney movie—with ruffles at the sleeves and a thick petticoat. It matched her blonde pigtails and turned her into a grungy sort of Alice in Wonderland.
“My job,” Alden said. “You know this is my job.”
She rolled her eyes. “FYI, I’m pretty sure your job isn’t about just standing there and looking super dumb at the door.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were too,” she said, her eyes wide, a vicious smile on her lips.
After he’d woken up cured he had been harsh with her when she tried to make friends with him. She dumped all this salt into the food bucket one day, which made some of the chimps throw up. They blamed him. He yelled at her, and then they yelled at him. He learned the hard way that she liked to hold grudges and that Dr. Stoven really didn’t care as long as she kept herself out of trouble.
There was a whimper on the other side of the door.
Kailyn giggled again.
He was going to teach her a lesson. She should take things seriously. This was nothing to joke about.
“You want to feed this one?” He gathered the food back into the bucket and held it out.
Her eyes widened behind her glasses until they became like huge, round lenses. They reminded him too much of the camera’s eye that had watched while they turned him into a Feeb.
“I’m not supposed to,” she said.
He shrugged his shoulders. “You’re right. Dr. Stoven always says this stuff isn’t for little kids like you.” He waited to see if she was smart enough not to take the bait.
She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”
The bucket weighed barely anything because it was almost empty now. It swung at her side, hitting her leg once. Her face, her uninfected skin, had gone even paler than usual.
He banged on the door. The V girl was aware enough to know that was the sound of food and she was only going to get the food if she put herself away. That was the problem. That’s what weirded him out so badly about her. She was more aware than other Vs. Not by much, but enough.
He looked carefully through the grate to confirm she was in the cage. After all, he didn’t want to kill Kailyn, just scare her.
He turned the wheel, then unlocked the door. This room was different, more like a hospital room than a chimp cage. Her bed and blanket had been torn to shreds in a fit of rage at some point. The V girl looked healthy except for the crazy light in her brown eyes. She seemed only a few years older than him. Her hair was in mattes around her face. Her fingernails were dirty. She wore a hospital gown that looked three sizes too big for her.
“Go on,” Alden said.
Sweat broke out on his forehead. Both of them were staring at him. But her stare was different than Kailyn’s. She looked at him like he was prey.
Kailyn stepped into the room with the bucket. Her legs shivered. He pushed her in further. She screeched and whirled around. “Don’t touch me!”
“FYI,” he forced out, the tremble in his voice betraying his fear, “I’m pretty sure just standing there and looking dumb isn’t going to get her fed.”
Kailyn gave him an evil look. “I’m fine. Just don’t touch me. You might still have Feeb germs lurking around you. Just because they say you’re cured doesn’t make it—”
A hand shot between the bars of the cage and grabbed at the bucket. Kailyn was so shocked, she forgot to let go. She was slammed into the bars. The V grabbed both pigtails and held Kailyn inches away from her face.
Alden shouted and threw himself between the two of them. The V didn’t budge. He hit at her arms and wrenched Kailyn away. He tumbled backwards, but didn’t fall because the V caught him by the shirt. He prayed for it to rip. Kailyn wailed behind him, but he couldn’t see her. The V brought him close, her breath harsh, her brown eyes huge and fixed on his face.
“Ricker?”
This stunned him. It wasn’t a common name. There was only one person in the world he’d ever met who had that name. She couldn’t—
She pulled his arm through the bars and bit him deep on the flesh of his bicep. The pain seared into him like fire. Panic flooded his hearing with a roar. She still held his arm. She was going for another bite.
Her pupils contracted.
She let go of him and he fell hard onto the cement, bruising his tailbone. She stepped away until her back was against the stone wall of the other side, as far from the bars as she could get. She covered her bloodied face with her hands.
Alden cradled his injured arm in his lap.
Kailyn got down on her knees next to him and tried to peel back his sleeve.
“Don’t!” He jerked away.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Get help, Kailyn. Hurry.”