Genesis Plague (42 page)

I
stood there staring at the blank wall monitor, my insides a
cold hollow, my mind unwilling to accept what it had just been shown.

“She wouldn’t have said
it if you hadn’t made her,” I said.

“Come now, Paul,” said
Xander, scolding. “I would hardly call that twisting her arm. I was expecting
more resistance from her, to be honest. I was pleasantly surprised.”

The rage building
inside me finally reached its tipping point, and the next thing I knew,
Xander’s jaw cracked under my closed fist and I stood over him as he sprawled
on the floor, his hands slipping in the gunk from his lifepod.

“Take it easy, Paul,”
said Flint.

“Why?” I growled. “Why
should I take it easy? Hundreds of millions are dead or dying. What’s one
more?”

Xander tried to crawl
away but I grabbed his ankle and dragged him back. I shoved my knee into the
base of his spine and slammed my fists into the back of his head. His skull bounced
off the hard ground with each impact. He was too weak to fight back.

“Paul, stop it!” yelled
Maria from behind.

I ignored her. Xander
groaned and I didn’t feel the slightest pang of remorse.

“You took her from me,”
I hissed. “And it’s the last mistake of your miserable life.”

There was the very
distinctive sound of a gun cocking behind me, and I froze.

“Paul,” said Maria
evenly. “I can’t let you do that to him. We need answers, and right now he’s
the only one who has them.”

I turned slowly, my
vision shaking from rage. Maria leveled a revolver at my chest.

“Where did you get
that?”

“The safe in the administration
office,” she said. “Didn’t think I’d have to use it for this, though.”

“You don’t,” I said.

She took a step
forward. Her hands didn’t shake, and she seemed perfectly at ease.

“Back away, Paul. I’m
going to ask Xander some questions, and I really, really,
really
don’t
want to have to shoot you.”

I looked at Flint as if
to say
A little help?
but he just shook his head. Xander sputtered on the
floor. I stood and walked over to Cassidy’s lifepod. The blood on my index
finger left a streak as I touched the glass in front of her face.

“Sit up, Xander,” said
Maria. “Don’t be a baby.”

He laughed as he
dragged himself to a nearby pod and sat with his back to the glass.

“Who are these people?”
asked Maria.

Xander grinned, showing
bloody teeth. “PharmaCor’s board of directors.”

“So what are you doing
with them?”

“I bought my way in.
Ms. Baker’s, as well.”

“Like they needed your
money,” said Flint.

“Not money.
Information.”

“You mean blackmail.”

“I prefer to call it
‘leverage’.”

“What about Cassidy?”
asked Maria.

Xander looked over at
her lifepod and shrugged. “Everyone has a vice. She is mine.”

“Tell us about the
parasite. Where did it come from?”

Xander chuckled.
“You’re all dead anyway, so what’s the point in telling you?”

“The point is,” said
Maria, aiming the gun at his head, “that I want to know.”

“It’s ancient,” said
Xander. “Primordial. It’s been around for half a billion years and it’s going
to be around long after humanity is dust. The parasite is exactly what it looks
like. It mimics the virus to infiltrate a host, where it detaches and
incubates.”

“Why haven’t we seen it
in any of the infected?”

“Because the conditions
for incubation have not been met.”

“What does that mean?”

Xander sighed. “I guess
it would take ages for you idiots to puzzle it out on your own. The organism
needs a specific, regulated environment in which to flourish. That’s why all of
the research bases were constructed in the Arctic Circle. Both the virus and
the parasite work much faster with heat. It’s a learning virus, Ms. Fontaine,
which means that with each new generation, it adapts to a host more quickly.”

“And it kills faster as
well,” said Flint.

“It doesn’t want to
kill
,
you oaf,” said Xander. “It wants to change us into suitable hosts. The first
few billion who die are doing so in order for the virus to learn how to alter
our systems while keeping us alive. Only then will the parasite be able to
grow. The parasite uses the natural processes of the virus for its own benefit,
can’t you see? By the seventh or eighth mutation, the infected will not die.”

“What’s all this for,
then?” I asked. “What are you trying to accomplish here?”

“Accomplish?” said
Xander. “Only the evolution of the human species to combat the next stage of
the virus. We’re beating it to the punch and knocking it out of the equation
completely. I am saving the world, Paul. You are thinking only of a cure which
cannot exist, but we,” he said, pointing to the men and women floating in the
lifepods, “have always been thinking ten steps ahead since we discovered the
virus. That is the only way to survive. You are looking at the future leaders
of a new world… a world reshaped by the parasite but reclaimed by humanity.”

“Yeah, well, good luck
with that,” I said.

“Where does this tunnel
lead?” asked Maria.

“Why?” asked Xander.
“Want to tag along?”

She aimed the gun at
him. “
Where?
”

“You’re not a killer,
Ms. Fontaine.” He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “What if I were to offer you
the chance to join us?”

“She’s not interested,
asshole,” said Flint.

“Mr. Reynolds,” said
Xander, “a modern man lets a woman speak for herself.”

“How do you know
there’s no cure?” asked Maria. She seemed uncertain of herself. Nervous.

“Because we had the
best scientists on the planet take a crack at it,” said Xander. “And you know
what they told us? You can’t beat this thing. You can only get ahead of it.”
His eyes sparked knowingly as he studied her. “It’s either die up there,” he
said, pointing toward the surface, “or thrive with us.”

“Maria…” I said. I
couldn’t believe it would be that easy.

“I’m going with him,
Paul,” she said. “You’ll get those samples to Greenland, and you’ll work on a
cure there. I don’t believe it’s impossible to stop the virus. I
can’t
believe it. I’ll do whatever I can to make sure these people don’t screw the
rest of us over. And I’ll watch out for Cassidy.”

“The hell you will,” I
said. “I’m going wherever she goes.”

“Paul, come on, man,”
said Flint, shaking his head.

Xander grunted as he
stood.

“Let me make the
decision easy for you,” he said.

He tapped rapidly at
the video screen, swiped a glowing red circle out of the way, then touched a
green button labeled INITIATE.

The engine of the train
hummed to life and a timer on the screen counted back from fifteen seconds.

“What the hell is that?!”
shouted Flint.

“The amount of time
before this train departs and the tunnel is detonated behind it,” said Xander.
“What will it be, Paul? Cassidy, or Greenland? There are no research facilities
where we’re headed.”

The timer continued:
10
…
9
…
8
…

Flint was on his feet
in a flash. He grabbed my arm but I yanked away. I slipped the chain hanging
around my neck over my head as I ran to Cassidy’s lifepod. I kissed the
engagement ring, then I hooked the chain to a protruding bolt at the top of the
glass so the ring hung down in front of Cassidy’s face.

Flint grabbed me again.
I scooped up the sample bag and I let him pull me to the exit. The last thing I
saw in the train before running out was Xander leaning casually against a
lifepod, waving at me, and Maria standing there, confident yet sad, holding the
gun loosely at her side.

Flint howled in pain as
we ran from the train car. I slung his arm over my shoulder to help take the
weight off his injured ankle. We hurried toward the hallway which led back to
Section 0-5.

Any second now
,
I thought.

I looked back as the
train pulled away from the platform. It quickly picked up speed and disappeared
down the dark tunnel.

“Think he was
bluffing?” asked Flint as we stood there, staring at the tunnel entrance.

Then the tunnel
exploded, shooting fire and debris out toward the platform.

I ran with Flint down
the hallway as the building shook around us. He collapsed to the floor, pulling
me with him, as a thick cloud of dust rolled down the hallway.

The rumbling subsided
and the dust settled.

I left Flint in the hallway
for a moment and walked back to the platform. All but one of the fluorescent
lights in the ceiling had burst. The broken fixtures showered sparks on the
rubble that covered the tracks.

The entrance to the
tunnel was sealed.

There was no way to
follow after Cassidy.

C
ompared to how difficult it had been to get to the heart of the
PharmaCor facility, getting out was a walk in the park.

An elevator in another
part of Section 0-5 took us to the entrance level and deposited us in a hidden
executive board room. Within a couple more minutes, Flint and I were walking
away from the building, heading toward the three figures next to the small
plane in the distance.

“Good to see they
didn’t leave without us,” said Flint.

“You can’t come with me
to Greenland, Flint,” I said.

“Try and stop me!”

“Maria patched you up,
but that ankle is still in bad shape, and you need a real doctor.”

He limped ahead, waving
his arms dramatically. “Where the
hell
am I supposed to find a doctor?!
It’s not like I can just hop in an ambulance and hitch a ride to the nearest
hospital.”

He stopped his tirade
when the ground shook.

I turned back as a
thick pillar of dust shot up from the ground at the edge of the glass-fronted
building. The mountain vibrated and the solar panels rattled.

“Uh oh,” said Flint. “She’s
gonna blow.”

But it wasn’t an
explosion, it was a collapse. The entire building sank into itself, falling
down through the underground levels. The tunnel detonation had weakened the
structural support of the entire complex. Perhaps that was Xander’s plan all
along.

The rumble deepened as
the last of the facility disappeared into a newly-formed crater at the base of
the mountain. A cloud of dust rose slowly into the air.

“That your doing?”
asked Frank Walker as we approached the plane.

“Can’t take credit for
that one,” Flint said.

Frank and Sherri greeted
him warmly and fussed over his wound. Emma stood quietly next to the small
Cessna plane, watching me.

“I was beginning to
think you weren’t coming back!” said Sherri, her eyes watering. “Where’s
Maria?”

“She went her own way,”
I said. “But she’ll be fine.”

Of that, I had no
doubt.

“Did you find what you
were looking for?” asked Frank.

“Most of it,” I said.

Emma walked over and
hugged my legs. I rubbed her blonde hair and closed my eyes. I hoped my niece
was safe.

“I’ll keep an eye on
her, Paul,” said Flint. “It will be nice having someone around who actually
listens to me for a change.”

“Where will you go?” I
asked.

Flint sighed. “The
ex-wife lives in Baltimore. Figure I better head there to check in. After I get
someone to fix me up, of course. Not sure what I’ll do after that. I don’t
imagine anyone has much use for a volcanologist these days.”

I smiled. “I’m sure
you’ll find a way to make yourself useful.”

“Well, then,” said
Frank, turning to me. “I suppose this ain’t the end of the road. Where we
headed next?”