Chapter Twenty-Eight

“Amber?”

“Hey, Dad. How was Mexico?” She sounded sleepy. It was midafternoon. Had she been taking a nap?

“Terrible. Where are you right now, sweetheart?” She was silent for a long time. “Amber?”

“You didn’t tell me not to call you Dad. And you called me sweetheart. What’s up?”

He almost smiled. “Something. Just tell me where you are.”

“I’m at the apartment.”

He exhaled, some of the tension leaving him. He’d thought she might have left for this initiation course. “I want you to do something for me.”

“You’re worrying me here.”

“Good. You need to be worried. Don’t leave the apartment. Not for anything.”

“I’m due on a flight to Maryland this afternoon.”

“Don’t go. Just for once, trust me on this.”

She was silent again, and he waited for her to think it through. “Is this something to do with Mexico?”

“Yes. I don’t want to go over the details on the phone, so I’m coming to see you. I’ll be there sometime tomorrow afternoon. I wish I could get there sooner, but there are some things I need to sort out first.”

“How serious is this?”

“Do you know how many protocols I’m breaking right now, just talking to you about it? That’s how serious this is. Just stay inside. Don’t go out. Not anywhere. And don’t answer the door, not to anyone. Will you do that?”

“Of course. Just stay safe, Dad.”

“I will. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

That had gone better than expected. Next, he tried Henry again. He got the same person as the last ten times he’d called. “I’m afraid Mr. Berenger isn’t taking calls right now. He’ll get back to you when he’s available.”

He ended the call without speaking, then tossed the phone on his desk, gritting his teeth in frustration. Where the hell was Henry? He had contacts everywhere—he could cut through some of the red tape, open doors, get them answers quicker than they could alone. Why had he chosen this moment to go incommunicado?

He’d visited the boy, Sandro, who’d been brought from Mexico in Sister Clara’s place. He was in the quarantine unit. He was still alive but only just. He’d been put into an induced coma and his body temperature reduced. While the rate of the virus’s spread had slowed, he wasn’t getting any better. Samples were being taken at regular intervals and being monitored. So far, they showed nothing of any use. His system wasn’t fighting back in any way.

Which meant Eli had zero to work with.

He resisted calling Shelly and asking if anything had happened with his test subjects. She would have contacted him if that was the case. He didn’t want to draw undue attention. But he wished he knew more. How fast was this stuff supposed to work?

He’d split his group into teams, working in three separate directions. The first was analyzing whatever was in those syringes Riley had given him. If it worked, they would need to get it into mass production as soon as possible.

Another group was testing the efficiency of the available reverse transcriptase inhibitors on the virus. Introducing the virus into cell cultures, then adding the inhibitor and measuring rates of multiplication. Hoping for anything that would slow it down.

And finally, a team just finding out everything they could about the virus. Hoping to uncover a way to fight back. The human body was an amazing machine—given the chance, it would find a way to fight. Right now, this virus wasn’t giving them a chance.

He spent the rest of the day organizing his teams, analyzing the results as they came through. Setting up new tests. If they ever got a breakthrough, they needed all the information they could get to move as quickly as possible.

By a quarter to eight that evening, his brain felt mushy and his stomach hollow. He hadn’t eaten all day and was running on caffeine. He headed over to his office, and as he made to close the door, one of his grad students, Heather, appeared at his side with a sandwich and a coffee. She pushed past him into the office and placed them on his desk. “Here you go, boss.”

“Thanks.” His team had all been really good. They were obviously wildly curious, but they’d given him some space. He would have to decide how much to tell them soon.

Heather closed the door on the way out, and Eli sat at his desk and switched on the laptop. He sat for a moment, breathing slowly, trying to ease some of the tension. His shoulders ached, and he rolled his head, then rubbed the back of his neck. He took a bite of the sandwich; it tasted of nothing, but he forced himself to chew slowly.

At eight exactly, Shelly appeared on the screen.

She looked as crappy as he felt, her hair pulled into a messy ponytail, eyes bloodshot.

“Hi,” she said. “I’ve got Adam, Leo, and Riley here with me.”

Riley looked directly at the camera and gave a small shake of her head.

Damn.

Still, he couldn’t resist asking, “The test subjects—is there any change?”

“The one furthest along died this afternoon. The others are showing no positive indications. I’ll send you the results. It’s likely too early to write it off yet—they can take time to kick in. You have others to try?”

He realized she meant other antiretrovirals and nodded. “I’m running tests now, and I should have you something by morning. There’s a nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor that looks hopeful.”

He was trying to wrap his head around the news, and he realized how much he’d been relying on getting some sort of magical result from the mysterious syringes. That the test subjects would all be better, or at least show some visible sign of improvement.

He couldn’t push it. If it had been antiretrovirals, then it was unlikely to show such speedy results. What did it mean?

“Okay,” Shelly continued. “Here’s the current situation. As of now, we have two hundred and three confirmed cases. Twenty-three fatalities, and we are expecting that number to rise dramatically during the night.”

“Mrs. Bartlet?” he asked. Though God knows why.

“Dead. This morning.” She rubbed a finger between her eyes. “On the positive side, the quarantine is holding. The firewall is in place. As far as we’re aware, news of the outbreak has not gotten out. That’s the last of the good news, I’m afraid. We’ve had notification from Japan. It’s our virus. No doubt. And Tokyo is under lockdown. They’re keeping the numbers to themselves, but I’m guessing it’s bad. I’ve sent them the genome sequencing; no doubt they’ll be working the antiretroviral angle as well. I have a call with them in the morning. And now for the really bad news—we’re almost certain we have a case in New York.”

Christ, he’d been hoping it would remain contained a little while longer. “How certain?”

“Not confirmed as of yet—we’re still waiting for the results. But pretty certain. We’ll know more in the morning. I’ve sent a team, but we’re going to have to draft in more staff. We’re stretched thin as it is.”

There was a large pool of people within the medical communities who were signed up to volunteer with CDC should the need arise. Doctors, nurses, paramedics. They were all going to be needed. How long until the staff started getting sick? While they could take all the precautions they liked, they couldn’t live inside a hazmat suit, and once it was out in the general population, quarantine areas would become ineffective.

“Have we run a revised simulation?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said. “And it’s not good. We have just over two weeks. Tell me you can get something within that time frame.”

He shook his head. “A cure or a vaccine is unlikely, but maybe we can slow it down.” He took them through the tests he was running. “I’ll keep trying,” he said. “Is there any information on the other tourists?”

“Not yet. Maybe they’re in New York. We’re still going through the data. We’ll find them.”

“Let me know when you have anything.”

He stared at the screen for a long time after it had gone black.

This was it. Wherever it had come from, whether it was man-made or some act of a god he didn’t believe in, it was here. The big one they had all been waiting for. Disease X.

It wasn’t official yet, but they had a pandemic on their hands.

And the world was about to descend into chaos.