Chapter Forty-Five

Eli’s mind was churning, trying to put the pieces together.

If Jason wasn’t selected for the trials because he had the antiaging mutation, why was he chosen?

The only answer he could come up with was because he had the virus in his DNA.

What did they want him for? What had they done to him and why?

He slowed the car as he approached the open gates. The place was surrounded by a ten-foot wall with razor wire on top. Obviously at some point, someone had made a lot of effort to keep people out of here. Not anymore. A guard post stood to the left of the open gates, though no guard appeared. There was no sign to say where they were, but from Jason’s description, he hadn’t expected one.

He drove through and pulled up in front of the long, low building. It was white, almost featureless, with too few windows. A double metal door was the only way in, this side of the building at least. He had no clue what he was going to find here, and for a moment his hands tightened on the wheel.

He sat for a moment, just breathing deeply. Fatigue dragged at his mind and his body, though that could be put down to the fact that he hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours. And beneath that, an underlying sense of failure. What was the point if you couldn’t save the people you loved? He should have gone to see Amber sooner. He’d been too lost in his savior complex, his need to save the fucking world. A world that likely didn’t deserve saving anyway.

If he’d kept her close. Or if he’d gotten to her quicker, could he have been in time? It was likely. If he’d never given her the fucking pills… So many ifs. He’d never know now.

He glanced at Riley in the seat next to him. Her eyes were closed—she’d slept most of the way from the airport—but she turned her head and blinked them open as if sensing his stare.

“Hey,” she said, her lips curving into a smile, and something warm twisted inside him. “You know, I heard you. What you said when you put me to sleep.”

“You did?” He’d wondered if she would mention it. He planned to say it again. Soon. When this was over and they were somewhere safe. He’d only ever told Amber he loved her at the end. When it was too late. He’d held that back, though he’d always believed she knew.

“You love me.” She smiled. “You know, Shelly would have lapped that up. I love you, too. Of course, it could just be heightened emotions from nearly dying. Or maybe gratitude for you saving my life.”

“No doubt, time will tell.”

“Yeah. We have time, don’t we.” She glanced around. “Are we there? The place looks deserted.”

“We’re here. How are you feeling?” Though he could tell just by her color and her breathing that she was well on the way to recovery.

He liked the way she didn’t automatically say “better.” She took the time to analyze her reactions, flexing her fingers, feeling beneath her armpits. Finally, she swallowed, and the smile was back. “Much better. I still have a slight headache, but nothing I can’t handle.”

He reached into a side pocket and pulled out a bottle of water, handed it to her. “Dehydration. Drink.”

She did. “God, I can hardly believe it. It worked.”

“It’s a Band-Aid. Not a cure. But it will hopefully hold until we find a way to kill this thing dead. Maybe there’ll be enough of us left to…” He didn’t really know. “Start again. Maybe do it differently this time.”

“Better? While it’s a nice thought, I’m not sure we’re capable of better. Maybe you can work on identifying the ‘asshole’ gene and cutting it out.”

“I’m not sure that would be ethical.”

“Fuck ethics. If only the ethical people follow them, what’s the point?”

Maybe she was right. He grabbed his pack from the back seat, climbed out of the car, and stretched, rolling his shoulders. Above him, the sky was a pale blue, almost white, but the day was warm. Midsummer in Alaska—probably as warm as it got. He went to help her out, but she was already on her feet and looking around her. “Where is this place?”

“An hour outside Anchorage.” He held out his hand to her and couldn’t believe how good it felt as she slipped her palm into his. Warm but not too warm. She squeezed his fingers. He was glad she had come.

For one thing, she was armed, even now, a pistol in the holster at her hip—he guessed it was second nature—which might come in handy, though he didn’t think they were going to meet much, if any, opposition. He wasn’t really expecting to find anyone alive here, just answers so he could put together the last pieces of the puzzle.

They headed up the shallow steps that led to the door. There was no handle, just a palm panel to the right. He tried placing his palm flat against it, but unsurprisingly, nothing happened. Next, he tried to insert his fingers between the doors. No way was that working. “Shit.”

He looked around for another way in. The few windows were all high up.

“Let me,” Riley said from beside him.

She pulled her pistol from the holster at her waist and shot the lock, once, twice, three times. Eli winced at the bangs. Then she holstered the pistol, drew a knife from somewhere at her back, pushed the blade between the doors, and a second later they slid open.

Eli stared at her. “I knew there was a reason I brought you along.”

“Hah, admit it. You couldn’t bear to leave me behind.”

He took a step closer, lowered his head, and kissed her lightly on the lips. “You’re right, I couldn’t.” He might never let her out of his sight again. He straightened. “Come on. If anyone heard those shots, they’ll be on their way.”

He listened but heard no sound of movement.

“I don’t think there’s anyone here,” she said.

The lights came on as they stepped through the doors. The generators must still be working, probably on emergency mode. He walked toward the reception desk, and on the wall behind it was a list of places. He scanned down them.

“Let’s try the mortuary first.”

“Yeah, because most people we come to see are already dead.”

They encountered no more locked doors. The mortuary was in the basement. Standard procedure. When they got there, the place was empty. The tightness around his chest eased a little, though all that meant was there was no one left to bring the dead here. There was an incinerating oven in one room, and Eli crossed to it. It was cold. Hadn’t been used in days.

They took the stairs—he didn’t trust the elevator—and went up to the ground floor. He found labs, certainly with the equipment necessary to do whatever Henry had wanted. He spent a few minutes looking around. There was also a smaller lab set up to biohazard-4 levels, but the doors were open, the seals ripped, and the place had been emptied. A few rooms had obviously been set up for high-level containment of people. Nobody was in them, either alive or dead.

Finally, they headed up to the first floor. There were windows and daylight. Eli hadn’t realized how oppressive the lower level had been. The first few doors led into offices. The next was set up as a hospital room, with a bed, a chair, a TV on the wall. No one there.

“Eli,” Riley called his name and he hurried out. She was at a station looking at a computer screen. “There’s someone here.”

He hurried across and looked down. The screen showed another hospital room, and this one wasn’t empty. A man lay on the bed, hooked up to a number of monitors. He appeared unconscious, his head turned away, his body still. A second man slumped in a chair by the bed.

He’d found Henry.

“Come on.” Grabbing Riley’s hand, he pulled her through a set of plastic curtains, then through a door into a small disinfecting room. He didn’t bother, just crossed to the opposite door and pushed it open. He half expected it to be locked, but the door opened easily and swung inward into the room they’d been watching on the screen.

For a few seconds, everything remained still, and he thought he was too late; Henry was dead, and he would never find the answers. Then the man in the chair raised his head and stared straight at Eli. He looked terrible, frail. In the few months since Eli had last seen him, he had aged a hundred years. Eli waited for the hatred to wash over him, to fill him with righteous rage. It never came. He was numb, that was all. This was too big for mere hatred.

“Eli. I didn’t expect to see you here.”

He stepped into the room, sensed Riley at his shoulder, but focused his attention on Henry. Then he turned to examine the patient on the bed and the world stopped. For a moment, he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He shook his head, trying to get his brain to function. A hand touched his arm, and he jumped, came back to himself.

“Eli?” Riley’s voice was soft. “What is it?”

He shrugged off the hand and took a step closer to the bed, reached out, and rested a finger on the man’s cheek. His skin was burning.

He stared at the patient, at the pulse throbbing at his throat, the sheen of sweat over his face, the flushed skin. Spittle frothed at the corners of his mouth. Eli had seen enough to recognize the symptoms. How the hell did a man who had supposedly been dead ten years catch the goddamn plague? He dragged his gaze back to Henry.

“He’s dying,” Henry said.

“Isn’t he supposed to be already dead? What the hell’s going on here?”

Riley came up beside him. “Who is it, Eli?”

He waved a hand toward the unconscious man. “Meet Ezekiel Berenger, Henry’s son and my once best friend. Who died ten years ago.”

“He was at the plane crash?” Riley asked.

Of course he was at the fucking plane crash. “I didn’t know. Jesus. All I knew was that he died on active duty. He was a marine and his body was never recovered. Supposedly.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I never… I thought… Jesus.” He drew a deep breath, then turned to Henry. “He’s been alive all this time? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Back then, you were young. Idealistic. I’d broken a million rules getting him out of the quarantine area.”

“He was part of the rescue mission?”

“A plane went down in the mountains. Zeke headed up the recovery mission, but something went wrong. I got a call from him. He was sick; everyone was dying. So I did what I had to, and I got him out of there. He was my only son. I couldn’t believe that with all my money, contacts, I couldn’t find a way to save him. It became my life’s work.” He shoved himself up, balancing on the edge of the bed while he steadied. “We’re not all as cold as you, Eli. We have people we love. Love enough to do anything for.”

“Like kill a million fucking people. Including Amber?”

“Amber is dead?” Henry winced. “I didn’t plan to kill anyone. Not even for Zeke.”

“What happened? How is he still alive? Everyone died.”

“I bribed someone to get him out of the quarantine zone and ship him here. We were careful; every safety measure was taken. There was no risk. Once he was here, it was clear he was dying. There wasn’t anything I could do to save him. Then. But research was moving fast. All I had to do was keep him alive, and I knew I would find a cure. You would find a cure. So we induced a coma—he was unconscious at that point, the virus already attacking his brain—and then lowered his body temperature.”

“The virus is dormant at low temperatures.”

“Yes, my scientists had already deduced that. Then we just had to keep him alive until we found a way to heal the damage and stop the progress of the disease.”

“That’s why you put so much money into my research. Why you were on the boards at WHO and CDC, monitoring what was going on.”

“I also had my own people working on it. None of them came as close as you.”

And the answer was right there.

He swayed as the enormity of that answer washed through him. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, nothing had changed. “I thought you wanted the antiaging research,” he said, as much to himself as Henry. “When my lab was broken into at the same time as Carmen’s, we all believed it was an accident—I don’t do animal testing. That was just a cover, wasn’t it? You weren’t stealing Carmen’s work but mine.” Jesus, it was all coming together. “And Linda, one of my grad students, left not long after. She knew this stuff just about as well as I did. She told me she was having family problems, had to go home. I’m guessing you paid her.”

Henry nodded but kept his attention on Zeke. “Until then, she was just reporting back to us. You were almost there. So close.”

Obviously, not fucking close enough. So what had changed? “Then you found out you were dying.”

“I ran out of time.”

Eli looked at him then. The whites of his eyes were yellow, his skin pale, not flushed with the disease. He almost said he was sorry but snapped back the automatic response. “So you decided to speed things up. Take a few risks.”

“What else was I to do? I had to save him. He’s my only son. It was supposed to be safe. They told me it was safe.”

“Yeah,” Riley said. “Totally safe, and now millions of people are dead or dying.”

“Millions?” He stumbled, his hand falling to his side, and Eli closed the small space between them and pushed him down into the chair behind him.

“Yeah. Does that make you feel important?” Riley snapped. “Jesus. You are singularly responsible for what might be the deaths of half the world’s population.”

He slumped in the chair, his gaze fixed on his son. Eli went over, checked Zeke’s pulse, which was rapid. He didn’t have much longer.

“We tried everything,” Henry said. “Flushing it out of his system, blood transplants, antiretroviral drugs. But the virus was embedded in his DNA, and it just came back whatever we did. I knew you’d found a way to cut out the HIV virus from infected cells. I thought if we could do that, then maybe he would stand a chance.”

“So you found someone with the virus in their DNA and you tried to cut it out.”

“Not me. My scientists. They said there was a chance, but Zeke was too weak if things went wrong. We needed to check that it would work. But that was secondary. We’d also identified the mutation that would give Zeke immunity. For all the good it did us.”

“Let me guess. The delivery system failed.” Of course it failed. They had never even got close to finding a way to successfully target all the cells. Which was what was needed to save Zeke.

“You knew that,” Henry replied. “You told me it wasn’t ready. But I had to try. You must see that.”

Hell no, he didn’t. He scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Jesus.”

Riley squeezed his arm. “You’re scaring me, Eli. What is it?”

“I just found out that Henry isn’t to blame for this at all. I am.”

“Explain. What’s going on?”

He took a deep breath, collected his thoughts, as the pieces fell into place. “Jason was born with both the viral DNA and the gene abnormality that gives immunity. He was never infectious. The viral DNA was effectively dormant. Until someone came along and cut it free. Using my technology. They probably thought it was perfectly safe. We’ve found inherited viral genomes in human DNA before—they’re called Human Endogenous Retroviruses—and they’ve always been noninfectious. Up until now. They probably monitored Jason for a while, saw no issues, and cut him free. And inside him the virus woke up, started multiplying. He became increasingly infectious, first with no symptoms. Then he became sick. But because he has a natural immunity, his body rallied, the viral levels fell, and he fought it off. Became better, less infectious. Until the levels rose again.”

Riley frowned. “So it’s nothing to do with antiaging?”

“No. It was only ever about the virus.”

So there was the answer. Unfortunately, it was of no help. It wouldn’t assist them in finding a cure. They had the mutation that gave immunity but still no way to get it into the body where it was needed.

He nodded toward where Zeke lay on the bed. “He’s dying.”

Henry reached out and touched his son’s cheek. “He’s coming out of the coma. I can’t stop it, and there’s no one else left. They all disappeared. I didn’t know what else I could do except spend the time with him.”

“How about not play God in the first place.” Though wasn’t that what Amber had accused him of? Playing God. Remaking man.

Henry finally looked up into Eli’s face. “What was all my money worth if I couldn’t use it to save someone I loved?”

Eli suspected that Henry wasn’t in his right mind. That the cancer was eating his brain. He’d been so fixated on saving Zeke for so long, that was all he could focus on in the end.

Zeke had been his friend. Someone so cocky and tough, always able to take care of himself. It was why Eli had let him in, and like Lorna, Zeke had ultimately let him down and died. Except here he was. He still couldn’t get his head around it. It was difficult to take in.

And Henry was hardly the only one to blame, whatever Riley said.

A cold lump formed in his belly, and he gave a short laugh, totally lacking in amusement. “Christ, Amber would have loved this. She always said that my work would have disastrous consequences. That mankind would ultimately suffer for messing with life.”

He could say it was Henry’s fault for setting it in motion. Or Linda’s for stealing the research. Jason’s for allowing them to use him in exchange for money. The scientists who used the research illegally, no doubt for financial gain. Or the people who had sabotaged that plane, forced it to crash, and awoke the sleeping monster. Or maybe go even further back, thousands of years to when a race on the edge of extinction had herded the sick and dying into a premature graveyard and created a time bomb waiting to go off.

Hell, the whole thing was such a mess, you could probably track the blame back to just about anyone on the planet.

But no. This was Eli’s fault.

And yet despite that, he still had no way to fix it. He looked down at his former friend, now a shell of his past self. Zeke had merely been the catalyst, or at least one of them. He didn’t deserve to die any more than anyone else.

He shrugged the backpack from his shoulder and placed it on the mattress. He drew out the box and opened it, pulled out the vial of serum.

“What are you doing?” Riley asked. She sounded horrified.

“I’m administering the cure to a sick patient.”

“You’re giving him what he wants?”

“I’m not doing this for Henry. I’m doing it for Zeke.” Though, Christ, what would he go through when he realized the numbers who had died to give him life? The Zeke he’d known would have been appalled. Maybe he’d be better off dead. But that wasn’t Eli’s call.

He took Zeke’s arm, turned it over, tapped it until he found the vein. Then he inserted the needle and pressed the plunger, watched as the pale-yellow liquid disappeared. Then he withdrew the needle and tossed it in the trash can.

He was a doctor. He saved people.

Would one more dying make anything better?

And maybe Zeke could help rebuild the world.