Eyam, England
Four months later
JULIE WIPED A stream of tears from her cheeks. “I miss you, Will,” she whispered.
Huddled under her umbrella, she watched raindrops stream down the hewn granite headstone. Today was the third time she had come to Eyam to visit Will’s grave since his death. It was also the third time she had been unable to fight back the tears. Losing him had been harder on her than she ever imagined it would be. She was taking life one day at time.
She had moved to London and taken a new job with a small bio-technology consulting firm, hoping to make a fresh start. She had not tendered a written resignation to Wien Bioscience, nor did she receive a termination letter. Apparently, the terms of her departure were mutually implicit. Her final direct deposit payment was prorated to the date she had taken Will’s blood sample to the lab and had it analyzed by Bart Bennett. She wondered whatever became of Bart.
She had not heard from Meredith Morley again, although sometimes she had nightmares of picking up the phone to make a call, but instead of a dial tone being greeted by Meredith’s bone-chilling voice. Because of the dreams, she had changed her mobile number. Whether it was prudent or paranoid she didn’t care; it made her feel safer.
The enigmatic crew who had orchestrated her rescue at the Karlskirche had vanished from her life as suddenly and mysteriously as they had appeared. The events of that night were so surreal and disjointed; she still had trouble stitching her memories together into a cogent narrative. One minute she was cradling Will in her arms, surrounded by the American agents who had just risked their lives to save her. The next, she was alone, arguing with a cadre of Viennese police officers and paramedics. The officer in charge at the scene had refused to let her accompany Will on the life-flight helicopter that fateful night. Instead, he had ordered her taken to a nearby precinct for questioning. After twelve hours of intense interrogation at the hands of the Austrian police, she had been abruptly discharged, with no charges filed against her.
For the next three days, Julie had stormed the city, trying to learn what had become of Will. But no one could—or would—answer her questions. She had checked every hospital in a sixty kilometer radius from the Karlskirche, but found no record of a man matching Will’s description being admitted with a gunshot wound to the chest. Most upsetting, however, was when she was told by a senior official that there was no record of a life-flight helicopter pickup at the Karlskirche on the night Will was shot. At every turn, her crusade was stymied.
The final rebuke came four days later, when she returned to the police precinct where she had been interrogated, only to learn that the OIC from the scene had been transferred to another division in Strasbourg. When she asked to speak with the precinct chief, the reception attendant said the chief was “prohibited” from discussing the details of the case with anyone and that her request for an audience was denied.
Fourteen days passed, with no news about Will. Then, on the fifteenth day, she received a most unexpected visitor at her apartment: Xavier Pope. Her initial reaction had been to slam the door in his face. Through the closed door, he’d politely and persistently pressed her—saying repeatedly that he refused to leave until she gave him a chance to “say his piece.” But it was the urn he held that swayed her, not the begging. To her astonishment, they talked for over an hour. Pope freely corroborated certain elements of Will’s story and adamantly denied others. She had scrutinized Pope’s every word and asked him the tough questions, but he never balked. After they had dispensed with the past, she opened the door to the present. Where had the life-flight helicopter taken Will? Why could she find no record of his hospital admittance in all of Vienna? Why was nobody talking about the events of that night? Pope took all her questions in stride. He explained that because of the perceived biosafety risks associated with the case, the Austrian Armed Forces had been tasked with locating and securing Foster. From what he had learned, Will had not been loaded into a life-flight helicopter that night, but rather into an Austrian military helicopter. He had been transported to a military hospital for emergency medical care, but, regrettably, had died en route. Pope went on to say that the Austrian military unilaterally made the decision to cremate Will’s body … for biosafety reasons.
The details and emotion in Pope’s story seemed genuine, and this left her confounded. On the one hand, she wanted to hate Pope, hold him responsible for all the pain she was feeling, all the pain he had caused Will. But on the other hand, Pope was the only person from Vyrogen who had reached out to her, apologized, and offered her closure.
Before leaving that night, Pope made a last and final gesture of goodwill. He explained that even though he had resigned from Vyrogen, he felt personally accountable for Will’s death. As such, he insisted that he pay for all of Will’s funeral expenses. An act of contrition, he had called it. Catatonic with grief and shock, she had graciously accepted. She instructed that Will’s ashes be buried in Eyam, in the same cemetery as his ancestors. Something told her he would have wanted it that way. What remained of Will’s legacy she decided to leave in Professor Johansen’s capable hands. She informed Johansen of Will’s decision to publish his genome, and instructed him to post Will’s immunity mutation on the Internet as “open source code” so all the world could benefit from his gift. During their last conversation, Johansen had told Julie that Will’s dream was still very much alive, and that he had recently obtained grant money from the university to sequence Will’s entire genome. Will’s sacrifice would not be in vain, he had promised her.
Of this fact, she was certain.
Meandering out of her daydream, she became aware that she was gently running her hand along her stomach, feeling the bump beneath the fabric of her raincoat. She was showing now. She’d already completed her first trimester and had her first ultrasound. Everything was normal. The baby was perfect. Beautiful. Watching the monitor that day had been the saddest, happiest moment of her life.
When she asked about the gender, the doctor had said it was too soon to tell. No matter, she knew it was a boy. She would call him Will … just as she had his father.