Truck lights appeared. The sun was at the horizon. They were outside the truck, hiding against it. He waited next to Mary. Gabbi was on the other side of him. She had a monster of a headache, but he thought her injury couldn’t be that bad if she was already awake.
“Do you think it’s Dr. Ferrad?” Alden said, speaking to Mary, even though he knew she couldn’t answer. It was the wrong direction to be Maibe and Ricker.
“Just be ready,” Gabbi said.
She looked at him in that judgmental way of hers that said somehow her time on the streets still counted for more than these last three years of survival ever could. He didn’t understand how Maibe could stand her no matter how loyal she was.
“I am,” he said. “More than you could know. You have no idea what I’ve been through these last few months.”
“Yeah. You’re right. I don’t. I’ve never been captured or held prisoner…oh wait, yes I have—by your father.”
“It’s not the same. They tortured me.”
“By curing you?”
“They killed people—” he gritted his teeth and told himself to quit it. The truck was coming, the truck needed to be stopped. Dr. Ferrad needed to be ended. All they had was a knife left in the dashboard. A stupid knife.
It would have to be enough. He would make it be enough.
“All right, Alden. I’m sorry. You’re right. Just breathe okay?”
He let out an explosive breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He jumped up and balanced on the balls of his feet.
“Wait, they might have guns,” Gabbi said.
The truck slowed at the barricade they’d made out of their vehicle. He had feared exactly this would happen—that in the chaos Dr. Ferrad would escape and it would all start over again.
In the back of the oncoming truck there was something big covered with a tarp and tied down with rope. He just knew Dr. Ferrad had gotten out the machine—that terrible, evil contraption that stole someone’s blood and transformed it into something that killed off both infections.
Dr. Ferrad stepped out.
He dashed around even as some part of him heard Gabbi tell him to stop.
Dr. Ferrad saw him. He realized he wanted her to pull out a gun and shoot him. That would be the easiest way to solve everything that had happened.
Fear filled her face and she held up her hands in surrender.
He pulled the knife out from his belt and decided he wasn’t going to stop. He was going to keep running and bury the knife in her chest where her heart should have been, if she had ever had a heart.
Something stopped him.
He didn’t know how long he stood there, knife out, or how long Dr. Ferrad stayed frozen, her hands up and trying to protect herself.
Sometimes his memory still didn’t work right.
He heard his name. He heard Maibe’s voice.
“Alden?”
Dr. Ferrad’s eyes were bloodshot behind her orange-rimmed glasses. “I know what I’ve done is not enough. It is only one step closer. I will not stop. I have not stopped my search for a cure that could end this all humanely. Don’t think I don’t feel the cost.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.
Maibe stepped in between Dr. Ferrad and the knife in his hand. Alden’s fingers shook. He’d done all of this for her. He had searched for the cure because he’d wanted it for her.
“Why don’t I get trapped in the fevers like the others?” Maibe asked. “Why me and not the others?”
Dr. Ferrad squinted at Maibe. She dropped her hands to her side. “The virus and the bacteria are meant to balance each other out but reinfection overwhelms the balance.”
“We know this,” Maibe said. “People who get attacked by Vs don’t come back now.”
Dr. Ferrad nodded. “Blood acts as a sterilizing agent for the two infections over time. Saliva and sputum contain heavy enough loads—”
“I don’t understand,” Maibe said. “Just tell me—”
“This is what I mean,” Dr. Ferrad said. “You must let me continue my work. Come with me. Help me. I am so close to another breakthrough. I have discovered so much more about the airborne qualities of the bacteria—”
“The bacteria is airborne?” Maibe said.
Dr. Ferrad stepped forward.
Alden raised his knife.
“Please.” Dr. Ferrad winced and stepped back. “The bacteria evolved. Or maybe the mutation was always there and they didn’t see it. They engineered it, you know, to fight the Lyssa virus, but they didn’t realize such a simple mutation would take the Borrelia alucinari airborne. It prefers the lung and brain tissue and spreads like tuberculosis. Not through blood, not through saliva—”
“That’s stupid,” Gabbi said. “We were all infected through blood—”
“In the beginning, yes,” Dr. Ferrad said, “but no longer and never with the bacteria.”
“You’re crazy!” Gabbi said. “My friends are dying, trapped in the fevers because they got bit by Vs one too many times.”
“Exactly,” Dr. Ferrad said, sounding triumphant.
“Help me save my friends,” Maibe said. “They’re trapped in the fevers. They were Feebs and got bit by Vs and now they’re trapped.”
Dr. Ferrad adjusted her glasses. “I can do that.”
Anger flared inside Alden. “She’s lying. Look at her. She’s lying to you. She doesn’t know.”
“I know enough,” Dr. Ferrad said. “Give me time and I will figure it out.”
Maibe looked at me with those dark eyes I’d always lost myself in.
“She’ll come with us,” Maibe said.
I could forget what she looked like when I was staring at those eyes. I could forget what the disease had done to her when she looked at me like I was all that mattered in the whole universe.
“We’ll take her back,” Maibe said. “We’ll watch her and make sure—we’ll destroy the machine.”
Dr. Ferrad’s eyes widened. “I cannot let you do that.”
He snapped to attention. Time sped up. He realized something terrible about himself. He hadn’t wanted the cure to save Maibe—not just to save her. He’d wanted the cure because then if she had it, if she looked normal again, maybe they could be together. He couldn’t bear to be with her the way she was now. Feeb skin, Feeb memories. He thought maybe he could have loved her except for the disease. He knew this was a terrible flaw inside of him. He wanted to blame his father for this, for helping make him this way, but he knew deep down that maybe he was born this way. Maybe he’d always been a coward.
His hand was still raised, ready to complete the arc. Just another few feet and Dr. Ferrad would be dead and she would deserve it.
“Alden, stop.” Maibe’s voice pleaded with him.
He flinched under that voice. “She’s lying. The information needs to die with her.”
Dr. Ferrad moved. Her hand hovered at her waist. Was she reaching for a weapon?
“Don’t do this to yourself, Alden. She’s not fighting back.”
His hand wavered in the air and then steadied. “I’m okay with that.” He drove the knife forward. Rays of sunlight bounced into his eyes. This did not prevent him from seeing Dr. Ferrad’s eyes widen, how she waited for death, how she didn’t fight back, how there was no weapon at her waist.
Gabbi yelled, “Stop!”
There was a blur and suddenly Mary was there and she dove for Dr. Ferrad’s neck and he was driving the knife into her back before he could stop. Her muzzle was off, her gloves were off. The tape trailed from her wrists like a dozen broken leashes.