Contaminated 2: Mercy Mode (25 page)

I don’t want to have pity for her, but something twists inside me. Whatever it is, it must show on my face, because Dr. Donna’s cold sneer comes back in an instant. She jerks away from me like I spit on her.

“Put her to sleep.”

“Velvet. You’ll be fine. This is to help you.” Dr. Billings puts his hand on my shoulder.

I’d roll away from him if I could move, but with my wrists and ankles still bound, the best I can do is to turn my face. I don’t want to look at him. He’s not my friend, no matter what he’s ever said.

“Okay. Let’s leave her for now.”

He hesitates. His fingers squeeze my shoulder. “I should stay with her for a bit, Donna. Just to make sure she’s all right. Cody, you can go, too.”

Left alone with me, Dr. Billings pulls the chair up next to the bed and holds my hand while I cry. I hate him, maybe especially because he’s trying to be so nice now. I can’t wipe my nose, so he does it for me. The snot dripping down my throat tastes like the medicine Dr. Donna squirted up to numb my head.

“I need a drink,” I croak.

He brings me water in a plastic cup, with a straw. I
sip greedily, then let myself fall back onto the pillows. Dr. Billings pats my arm.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a while. “I tried to talk her out of the collar. But Donna’s my superior. She’s the one in charge. And she used to be … better. I’ve worked with her for years, and you won’t believe me, but it’s true. Donna was one of the most compassionate researchers I’ve ever known.”

I don’t answer him. For one, it hurts my throat to talk. For another, I don’t have anything to say.

“You’re special, Velvet. You don’t know how much. And sometimes, people who are special have to do things they don’t want to do. For the greater good. Sacrifices must be made. I know it’s hard to believe. And right now I’m sure you hate us all. Maybe even me.” He gives me a half-hopeful smile, like he wants me to deny it. When I don’t, when I say nothing but turn my face away again, Dr. Billings sighs. “But you have to understand, Velvet. All of this is going to help people. I promise you that. I wouldn’t be doing any of this if I didn’t think we could figure out a way to really make a difference.”

I believe he means it. I just can’t bring myself to care. There is a collar around my neck that is sending wireless pulses of energy into my brains to keep me from caring. If I try too hard, it will batter my brain with more electricity until it kills me.

“I know you don’t understand. But you will.” He takes
my hand again, offering me comfort I don’t want from him. “I barely understand it myself, but that’s the beauty of science, Velvet. Discovery. Putting the pieces of the puzzle together, making it all fit. You know, I wanted to be a researcher my whole life, ever since I was a kid. I used to do science experiments in my room with beakers and chemicals. My parents hated it.”

I want him to go away.

He stands to do something to the collar. I feel the pressure of it on my throat for a second, then release. “There. That should be better. You know, Velvet, so much of research is hard work, brutal dedication, the grind of experimentation. Over and over, changing the smallest variables to get a different result, trying to figure out what you want to achieve and how to get it. But sometimes … oh, lots of times, no matter how much work you do, how careful you are, how precise … it’s all just a matter of luck.”

He sits again, leaning forward to look into my eyes. Something wet is trickling out of them, and he snags a tissue from the box on the nightstand. It comes away stained crimson, and I’m not surprised to find I’m weeping blood.

“Luck was finding you, Velvet Ellis. Because out of all the people we’ve been testing, you are unique. Now, we thought there might be a chance, given your mother’s rather remarkable recovery—”

“My mother?” The words are slurred, but he understands me.

Dr. Billings nods. “Yes. In all the test subjects, less than one percent of them ever showed any signs of recovery once they’d succumbed to the full effects of the Contamination. Those who’d suffered lesser gradations of Contamination naturally responded much better to the StayCalm collar, and of course the ones who’d been totally destroyed by the progression of their disease didn’t have such a positive reaction. But invariably, all those fitted with the collars were able to control their reactions. Well”—he chuckles a little self-consciously—“not control them, really. Of course you know how the collar works. They’re merely unable to continue reacting negatively to stimuli because the collar prevents it. But less than one percent ever showed any signs of improvement after being fitted with a collar. But your mother … her records showed that she was initially one of the worst hit with the disease. Her brain, simply riddled with holes. Just decimated.”

I try to breathe, rasping harshly in my throat. “You had my mother’s records?”

“Yes. Of course. She was released to the kennel. We do keep records on all the Contamination victims who were reunited with their families. Obviously, we didn’t know her name or history when she was first … um … intercepted. But after you claimed her, we were able to retroactively cross-reference all the previous testing we’d done on her. And when we brought you both here …”

“She’s still here.”

“Yes.”

I close my eyes. “She’s alive.”

“Oh … Velvet. Yes. She’s alive.” He sounds a little sad. “I’d have told you if she’d passed.”

“Is she all right? You said remarkable recovery.” Each word is like spitting out pebbles.

“Others tried to take the collars off, you know. And it never worked. They all died. All of them.”

Even in my boggled state, I know there’s no way they can possibly know for sure that’s true. There could’ve been any number of people who never reported taking off the collars, who’d been just fine.

“But your mother … not only did she not die from the removal, but she actually seemed to recover once it had been taken off. Right?”

“Yes. She got better.”

“Unfortunately, of course, the improvement was sporadic and not quantifiable, and she had a lot of regression. Though not to the point she’d been at her worst. The brain is an amazing organ. There’ve been many cases of stroke victims or patients with brain damage, sometimes even catastrophic injuries, recovering many motor functions that should’ve been lost forever. And there’ve been people who get what seems to have been a relatively minor bump on the head who experience complete personality changes, become incapable of the simplest tasks. Forget who they are. And we don’t really know anything about why some
people are able to adapt and others can’t. But your mom, she definitely did.”

I force myself to look at him. More wetness slides down my face, and he leans again to dab it. This time, the tissue’s dabbed with pinkish yellow fluid, totally disgusting.

“And now?”

“Now,” Dr. Billings says, and lets out a sigh. “Well, now I’m afraid she’s not doing very well at all. She’s quiet. That’s the best way I can describe her. Your father, on the other hand—”

“Arthur.” Dr. Donna’s harsh voice cuts him off from the doorway. “I think it’s time you left Velvet alone. Cody can sit with her. You should go home and get some rest.”

Reluctantly, Dr. Billings stands, his hand still holding mine. He looks into my eyes, searching them. I close them to keep him from finding whatever it is he’s trying to find, and after a few minutes, he goes away.

I’M NOT HUNGRY. DON’T WANT TO EAT. ARNALDO
brings me a tray of oatmeal, a banana, some hot cocoa, and a glass of orange juice. I don’t take a bite or a sip, even though he tries to tempt me into it with jokes.

I sit in my chair without moving. I’m not strapped down anymore. I could move, if I want to. I could turn my head and stand, make my feet go one in front of the other. I could even speak, if I want to. But I sit, the weight of the collar keeping me silent.

Without a window to show the rise and set of the sun and without a clock, the only way for me to mark the passing of time is by the swell of my hunger and my need to use the bathroom. But I’m not hungry, and I don’t eat or drink, so I need to get up to use the toilet only once. Other than that, I sit. And sit. And sit.

Arnaldo goes off shift and Cody comes on.

“You look terrible,” he tells me, almost kindly. “Man, you look like crap.”

Dr. Donna comes in finally, looking stern. “If you don’t eat, I’m going to have to hook you up to an IV or fit you with a feeding tube. Would you like that, Velvet? A feeding tube and a catheter and, hey, why not just put a colostomy bag on you while we’re at it?”

“You’ll do whatever you want, anyway.” The first words out of my mouth taste like old blood.

She smiles. “Yes. True. But trust me, you’ll like it much better if you just eat of your own accord rather than making me force you.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“You’re being very petulant, Velvet. I’m sure your parents would be very disappointed in you.”

This sparks me into anger, as I’m sure she knew it would. “My parents would never have wanted me to just give in to you!”

“Careful,” she says gently. “You know what will happen if you let yourself get too agitated.”

I brace myself for the rip of electricity through me. I wonder how bad it will hurt. I grip the sides of my chair, but nothing much happens other than a twinge in my head, and that could be left over from putting the needles in.

“So interesting. You’re so much like your parents. Both of them.” She studies me with a strange smile on her red-painted lips. “You’re wondering how I know, right?”

I keep myself still. I’m not hungry, that’s true, but I am achy and stiff from not getting out of this chair all day. And now for the first time since she put the collar on me, I’m not … blank. The cold oatmeal is stomach turning, but I pull it toward me and spoon some into my mouth, anyway.

“Good girl.”

I ignore her and put another spoonful of nasty oatmeal in my mouth. Swallow. Another. I strip the peel off the banana and take a bite, and that’s much better.

“Don’t forget the juice,” Dr. Donna says. “It’s full of vitamins.”

She leans against the dresser with her arms crossed over her chest. It’s her favorite position, and she stares at me while I eat. “Arthur wanted to tell you as soon as we found out and put two and two together, but by that point, I wasn’t sure what benefit it would have for you. After all, if we’d known from the beginning exactly what to look for, how to test you, and why, well, I’m sure we’d have started seeing results weeks ago. How much time we could’ve saved, right? If only we’d known.”

“Known what?” I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand; I’d been sloppy with the juice. Clumsy hands. I don’t want to think about why.

“The reasons why you are unique. The way you are. It’s because of your parents, Velvet. And of course we knew about your mother right from the start. As soon as you both were brought in, we figured out that Malinda was
an anomaly. But if only we’d known about your father sooner …”

“What about my dad?” I cry out, and brace myself for an onslaught from the collar. Other than that same sort of twinge, there’s nothing, but Dr. Donna’s lips twitch.

“Careful,” she murmurs. “You don’t want to start blinking red, do you? Finish your juice.”

I don’t want more juice. “My dad’s alive. Isn’t he? He came to our house, and the Concops were after him. That was my dad, right?”

For a moment, I’m sure she’s going to lie to me, but then Dr. Donna shrugs. “Yes. Some of my less-invested colleagues took umbrage with my methods. They claimed the results we were achieving were not worth the use of human subjects. So stupid. Such lack of forward thinking. There
are
no subjects that aren’t human. The Contamination was an enormous random happenstance that we haven’t been able to duplicate, not even in primates. The Contamination is limited to people who ingested ThinPro protein water in any quantity during a period of approximately eighteen months, from the first tainted batch until it was pulled from the market, and it’s manifested itself in completely unpredictable ways we haven’t even been able to effectively trajectorize. In other words, we have no idea what specific variables resulted in the Contamination, nor have we been able to accurately predict how it affects individuals, or what the long-term effects are in the exposed population.”

“What’s that got to do with my dad?” I’m having a hard time following her. I feel dozy and lazy, like my head wants to droop.

“After their termination from the research program, a few of my colleagues decided they were going to … remove … the patients from the more strenuous experiments. Several weeks ago, they loaded them into a tractor-trailer that was allegedly delivering supplies to the complex. Then they tried to get out of town by running one of the barriers, but they couldn’t even manage that right. They wrecked the truck.”

I choke on a breath, thinking of the truck barreling down on the concrete barriers, the soldier tossing out the razor strip. My dad had been in that truck, and I hadn’t even known. “He got out and tried to come home, and you hunted him down like some kind of wild animal.”

Her expression tells me that she thinks that’s what he is. “We couldn’t let him go, Velvet. Your father’s too important to our research.”

“What’s so special about him?” I know the things that make my dad special. His goofy sense of humor. How good he was at fixing things when they broke. How he never made me or Opal feel less because we were girls, even if he did sometimes complain that being a guy in a house full of women was hard to deal with. But Dr. Donna wouldn’t care about any of that stuff. To her, my dad’s a test subject, nothing else.

“Your father was brought into one of the medical facilities during the first wave. According to his records, he showed signs of extreme disorientation, violent tendencies, and a severe lack of motor control. He’d been picked up during the rioting in downtown Lebanon, and had been witnessed breaking several storefront windows as well as assaulting police officers who arrived on scene. He was restrained, not given a field lobotomy or dispatched immediately, as so many of them were, because the arresting officer recognized him. Your father was unable to identify himself, though he had his wallet with him and the officer was able to confirm your dad’s identity.”