I woke up in a white room. White light blazed so brightly it hurt my eyes. White walls blended into the floor so that I couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended.
I tried to roll over. I was in a hospital bed. My wrist hurt, my head hurt. The last thing I could remember was being outside. We had been surrounded. These uninfected had worn no safety gear and they’d shot us one by one, but the shots hadn’t sounded right. We fell, but there was no blood. When it was my turn the bullet stung, but it wasn’t really a bullet. The metal capsule had stuck out where it entered my thigh and the end was this pinkish sort of fluff ball. It made me miss my pink sweatshirt. The sweatshirt had been the very last gift my uncle had given me, but the cloth had fallen to pieces a year after the infection started. I’d fallen into a heap on the ground, thinking about that pink sweatshirt, and then I’d woken up here.
There was a bed next to me. Everything smelled like bleach. I swore I could even taste it on my tongue. I pushed myself up. This room was full of beds. Gabbi’s spiky shock of hair was dark against one pillow, Ricker’s dirty blond hair peeked out of a set of sheets. Tabitha, Leon, Bernice, Nindal. We were all together.
A door clicked open.
Someone came in with a clipboard. I didn’t know if I was seeing things right. Could it really be Dr. Ferrad? She wore large, orange-rimmed glasses. Her bright blue eyes were wide as she looked us over. Her skin was clear. Uninfected.
Gabbi hissed and jumped off the bed. Her face twisted in this terrible grimace. She ran for Dr. Ferrad with her hands shaped into claws.
The clipboard flew into the air and tumbled out of sight under one of the beds. Dr. Ferrad threw up her hands to cover her face. “Stop! I can cure you!”
Leon scrambled from his bed. The sheets he left behind were coated in dust and ash from his clothes. I thought he was going to join the fight against Dr. Ferrad. He threaded his arms through Gabbi’s and pinned them behind her back. This only enraged her. She spit, kicked out, and bucked against him until I feared she might break an arm.
“Gabbi!” I shouted. Ricker and I ran to them.
I didn’t know if I should help Leon or Gabbi. She was wild, uncontrollable, gone V. Just gone.
Another uninfected rushed in, slamming the door open. This white coat held a large needle and plunged it into Gabbi’s arm. She bucked against Leon again. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and then all of her muscles relaxed as she fell unconscious.
“Put her away.” Dr. Ferrad readjusted her glasses.
“No!” I shouted it the same time Ricker did.
Both of us stood over her unconscious form, back-to-back. I crossed my arms. My chest shook from trying to breath. This was all happening too fast.
“There’s no time for this,” Dr. Ferrad said. “The infected you brought with you have finally arrived.”
“What are you talking about?” Bernice said. Sweat stood out on his forehead and his face was flushed even though he hadn’t left the bed.
“The Vs have come,” Nindal said. “That’s what she means.”
“Yes,” Dr. Ferrad said.
“I don’t see why we should help you.” But there was something in Leon’s voice that said he didn’t really mean it. “What’s in it for us?”
Her blue eyes raked him over with disdain. “I came here in good faith, with no weapons, no guard, to prove to you we are here to help. Anyone who helps us fight off the Vs will get the cure.”
Ricker stiffened behind me.
Leon looked stunned.
She had said it as if it were no big deal, as if the cure was a cookie she could just give out when someone acted good.
“You need to move.” Dr. Ferrad’s gaze shifted back to me. I almost flinched but forced myself to stay still. “Gabbi must go to a different room now that the Lyssa virus has taken a stronger hold in her.”
“She’ll come out of it,” Ricker said.
“She always comes out of it,” I said, even though deep in the pit of my stomach I feared maybe she wouldn’t, maybe not this time. But I couldn’t believe that, not after all that she had done for me or all that we had been through together. We were so close to a cure. My brain was frantically lining up the final pieces of the puzzle, laying them out in a line in front of me, analyzing how to rotate them to lock perfectly into place.
“We do not have time—”
Another white coat rushed into the room. “Dr. Ferrad, they’re massing at the East Gate!“
“Just give her the cure now,” I said. “Then we’ll help.”
“Very well,” Dr. Ferrad said.
“I must disagree,” the newest white coat said.
“Dr. Stoven, do not waste time deliberating this decision.”
“I must insist—”
“We’re going with her,” I said. Neither doctor had brought weapons or guards. We could rush them if we needed to. We could force them. “Stop wasting time.”
Dr. Ferrad bent over and retrieved her clipboard. She brushed off imaginary dust from it with one hand. “Dr. Stoven, please escort them to the secondary treatment center.” She did not look at Dr. Stoven but it seemed like a message had passed between them.
Dr. Stoven closed his mouth and looked hard at Gabbi’s unconscious body. “Help me with her, and hurry it up.”
Dr. Stoven and Ricker picked Gabbi up from the floor and left. I went to follow them and the room plunged into darkness. Sirens blared. Red lights came on and cast a terrible glow everywhere.
“Anyone who wants the cure, get yourself to the East Gate.” Dr. Ferrad yelled this while running out.
Leon, Bernice, Nindal—everyone followed her.
The sirens cut off, leaving my ears ringing. The red lights stayed on, playing tricks with my eyes. There was a creaking sound behind me. I whirled around, my heartbeat speeding up.
I thought I was the last one in the room, but there was Tabitha, bathed in a red glow. Fire sparked in her eyes, but in spite of that, she held herself so still, like a statue. I realized she wasn’t going V like the rest of them. She was going Faint like me and she had just come out of its spell.
Tabitha sat up and placed her bare feet on the cold floor. “You can’t possibly be stupid enough to think she’s telling the truth.”
The compound was huge. Acres and acres of buildings, outdoor areas, one tall fence that surrounded the entire facility, open fields for miles in either direction. I catalogued all of this as I ran after Ricker, Gabbi, and the white coats. No one tried to stop me. Everyone else was headed in one direction. I assumed it must be the East Gate.
I passed by an outdoor enclosure and the chatter from it made me stumble. There were groups of chimps behind the fences. Their dark faces and human-like hands and bodies freaked me out even as my brain said this made sense. This was a primate research facility after all.
Ricker, Gabbi, and Dr. Stoven disappeared into the next building. I followed on their heels. A hallway veered right and dumped us into an empty cafeteria.
Ricker shouted. Something large barreled into me. I flew through the air for an eternity. The impact knocked the breath out of me. My injured wrist hit the floor and exploded in pain. My ankle throbbed. I swore the ceiling panels swayed as I fought to get back my breath. A large shadow loomed over me, hot stinking breath, wild eyes, saliva dripping in long yellow strands from his mouth. It was a V, inside the building with us, inside where one bite would drown us in an eternity of fevers.
Except V bites didn’t trap me in the fevers.
I slammed the heel of my good hand into the underside of the V’s chin. Ricker picked up a chair and threw it, sending the V tumbling into another group of chairs.
As the V began to rise a shot rang out. Dr. Stoven had fired the shot. He walked up to the V and fired a second shot. No blood. Only tranquilizers again.
Two more Vs burst in from outside. He took them down methodically. Gabbi was a crumpled pile on the ground, unaware of the chaos around her.
Ricker shook my shoulder. “Help me with Gabbi!”
She moaned as we dragged her away. Red lights obscured signs and made the hallways all look the same. We burst out a Fire Exit door into the bright afternoon sun. The disconnect from inside stunned my mind. I couldn’t recognize what I was seeing. People in white coats and tattered clothing all running, some toward buildings, others away, still others toward each other, and then falling to the ground. Blood everywhere.
Gabbi moaned again and tried to hold her head up. We left the white coats to fight the Vs. It was the only thing we could do until Gabbi was safe. She was coming out of unconsciousness now, but would she be herself or like one of the Vs?
“Where are you going, Maibe?” Ricker said.
“I don’t know,” I said, breathless, but it was almost as if a magnet pulled me forward, away from the noise and the violence behind us, ahead to the screams and chatter of another set of chimp cages. We rushed into the next building, plunging into the red darkness. This hallway had a number of doors lining it. A steel door at the end was slightly open.
Inside it was dark, but at least not the ghastly red of the previous buildings. The air smelled of hay, urine, animal. A play structure’s primary-colored plastic sat off to one side behind glass walls. The chimps, maybe half a dozen, all stood or hung from the play equipment, hooting and making noises while staring at us.
Gabbi jerked suddenly. I lost my grip and she fell to the ground, but she caught herself at the last minute with her hands. Her eyes were wide as she took in the hallway, the glass walls, the chimps, the playground. “What’s happening?”
“The V mob is here,” Ricker said.
“They’re out trying to protect the cure,” I said. “We have to help, but we have to get you safe first.”
I hooked my arm under Gabbi’s and pulled her up. I helped her limp toward the open steel door.
“What if there’s a V?” Ricker said.
“Then we’ll kill it,” Gabbi said.
Ricker hurried to get ahead of us. He pulled up the door, then froze. He turned around—all the blood drained from his face.
“I…” He brushed a hand across his eyes. “Is this real?”
I pushed him aside because I knew whatever it was it couldn’t be a V. He would have been attacked already. A blue food barrel stood just inside the door. Two people huddled next to it.
“Maibe?” Alden’s voice.
My head began to spin.
One of the people stood up. It was Alden’s voice, I knew it was his voice. I thought it must be Alden who stood up even though it was hard to tell in the shadows. He walked to me with outstretched hands, but something was wrong with his arms. There was something terrible about his face. It looked like a muzzle was strapped over his mouth and someone had duct taped oven mitts over his hands.
“Mary?” Gabbi said, stepping forward. “Ricker, are you seeing this? Is it really her?”
“I see her.”
My eyes caught on Ricker’s arm and the puckered skin that formed the name Mary in scrawling childish letters. I looked again. This wasn’t Alden. The hair and eyes were too dark.
The person moaned under the muzzle.
“Don’t touch her,” a male voice said—Alden said.
“What have you done to her?” Gabbi took an unsteady step into the room. “I will end you for hurting her. I will—”
“Gabbi, she’s V,” Ricker said. “She’s V and he probably helped save her life. Didn’t you?”
I couldn’t stop myself any longer. “Alden, is that you or is it a ghost? Someone please tell me.” I trembled, waiting, trying to tell my brain to work, please work, please be right.
“It’s Alden,” Ricker said quietly.
I knelt on the ground and reached out a hand. “Alden.” I touched his cheek, but then remembered. He hated it when Feebs touched him. He hated it when I had touched him before.
He did not flinch away.
I looked closer. Scabbed over scratches marred one cheek. Even in the dim light, he had the same fading marks as Jane.
“You’ve been infected and cured?”
He barked a laugh. “I guess you can call it that.”