The Monarch (22 page)

“Is that what your father has?” Jonathan asked.

“Yes, he has kuru, a type of prion disease that used to be quite prevalent in New Guinea back in the 1970s.”

“The seventies? How long has he known he had it?” Jonathan asked.

“He was diagnosed shortly after returning from New Guinea around 1973. Even though they could detect it in his blood, kuru has a long incubation period before symptoms start to show up. Decades,” she said. She left out the part about that being the same year she was born—­partly because with her recent revelations, she wasn't all that sure about the veracity of what she'd always assumed were facts about her early childhood. And partly because she wasn't that crazy about admitting to Jonathan that she was over forty.

“Wait a minute. Kuru. Kuru. Why do I know that name?” Jonathan asked, but he didn't appear to be asking her. Then it seemed to come to him. “Kuru. I think I played a video game that had kuru in the backstory a year or two ago. In fact, I think it was set near Papua New Guinea. But they must have embellished. It was a zombie game. The characters only turned when they—­”

Jonathan stopped mid-­sentence. Sophia was pretty sure it was because of the look on her face. Even with her connection to Nathan being fictional, she was mortified at the idea of the truth coming out. But she knew the best thing she could do was face it head-­on.

“Kuru was at epidemic levels in the 1970s because of the indigenous tribes' practice of ritualistic cannibalism. I'm not familiar with the video game, and I'm sure they did hyperbolize for effect, but it was based on fact. Kuru is very real. And so is the fact that to contract it, Nathan had to have consumed human tissue, including brain.”

Jonathan was apparently trying to control his reaction, but when his eyes slightly widened she knew she had to keep going or the emotional turmoil of the last few days would push her over the edge.

“Once symptoms start to show, they typically increase with intensity over several months until they finally result in death. When his symptoms first showed he was told he had six to eighteen months to live,” Sophia said. She turned away from Jonathan, took a moment to steady herself, and then opened one of the cages.

“When was that?” Jonathan asked with an even tone. Sophia couldn't be sure, of course, but she liked the idea that he was ignoring the elephant in the room for her sake.

She turned around holding out two tiny white mice, their pink noses furiously sniffing the air. “Five years ago.”

“Five
years
?”

Sophia put the mice down on a table rimmed with six-­inch Plexiglas. Jonathan came over beside her and they looked down at her creatures. One was inquisitive and almost hyperactive, zipping here and there in the enclosure. The other lay on its side, pawing at the air and rolling its head back in semicircles, its mouth opening and closing.

“My father had an advantage over others afflicted with a prion disease. He knew it was coming long before the symptoms showed up. It gave him time to prepare.”

“Prepare?”

“Yes. His subvocally controlled chair, for instance. He had it developed especially for him.”

“Vocal? I can't even see his lips move,” Jonathan said.

“Not vocal,
subvocal
. Like when you read to yourself. The brain still sends electrical impulses to the vocal cords even if you don't speak out loud. The neckband picks those up and translates them into commands—­speech, movement—­like that.”

“Amazing.”

“And his voice synthesizer. Most ­people have to make do with a canned, tinny electronic voice. Even with advancements in the field, the vocal generator always sounds artificial.”

“You mean like Stephen Hawking,” Jonathan said.

“Sort of. They've actually offered Mr. Hawking much more advanced and natural-­sounding voice synthesizers, but he keeps his antiquated one since so many ­people identify its tone and sound with him. But my father was never one for nostalgia. He spent almost two years recording his own voice so that if and when it happened, his artificial voice would sound like his own. But he also had other advantages.”

“You mean money.”

“Yes. He had resources others didn't. For the most part, there's next to no research into prion diseases,” Sophia said, picking up the hyperactive mouse as it scaled one of the Plexiglas walls in an attempt to escape. She gently put it back down next to its immobile brother.

“Why not?”

“Economics. The law of averages, really. Prion diseases are very rare. Only about three hundred cases are diagnosed in the United States every year. With so many other diseases affecting so many more ­people in the world, it's hard to justify funding for research.”

“Unless you're a gazillionaire who has it,” Jonathan said.

She chuckled and agreed.

“So why are we looking at mice?” he asked. Sophia thought he seemed more agitated than before, like he was in a hurry.

God, I'm boring him.

“This is Charlie and Lucy,” Sophia said, pointing out that Lucy was the hyperactive mouse. “Can you tell me which one has the prion disease?”

“Charlie looks like he does, but I'm guessing it's a trick question. I'll say Lucy.”

“Both answers are wrong.”

“Huh?”

“They both have a form of kuru. They've had it exactly the same amount of time and at the same density.”

“You cured Lucy?”

“Not yet,” she said, walking over to a refrigerator. She took out a bottle filled with blue liquid and returned.

“She looks pretty cured to me,” Jonathan said.

“Watch.” She filled a hypodermic needle with some of the blue fluid and then injected Charlie with it. For a moment, nothing happened. Then Charlie's convulsions became much more violent. He looked like he was going to tear himself apart.

“Hey,” Jonathan said.

“Wait for it,” she said.

Then, as abruptly as they'd started, the convulsions stopped. But more than that, Charlie seemed to be under control now. He got up off his side and scampered over to sniff what Lucy was doing. They were identical now, in every way. It was impossible to tell them apart.

“That's not a cure?” Jonathan asked.

“Not yet. The serum, in its simplest form, is healthy proteins from Fred's brain.”

“Fred?”

“One of their companions I euthanized earlier. Unfortunately, it's impossible to harvest the proteins needed from a live donor. They're not cured, but they have lived longer than any of the other subjects with the disease.”

“And any brain has the proteins they need?”

“No, unfortunately. At first, our tests were all over the map. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't. It was frustrating. Then I found the commonality in the successful cases: I had trained all the positive result donors how to run the maze. The ineffective ones had no training at all. Learning or intelligence has an effect on the brain's proteins. But the donors who did the best on the maze—­the
smartest
donors—­produced the best results.”

“This formula of yours, that's how your father has survived so long?” Jonathan said.

“Yes,” Sophia said. “But I just tweaked it for his specific needs. The original serum, including years of trials, was done in Nigeria.”

“I think there's something wrong with your formula,” Jonathan said. Sophia looked at the mice and saw one of them convulse and fall over onto its side. “Charlie's down again.”

“That's not Charlie, it's Lucy,” Sophia said. “Though in a few hours, the same thing will happen to Charlie. It's one of the problems I haven't worked out yet. The final problem, really. The effect is fleeting.”

“Still, if you can transfer this to humans it would be worth millions. Billions. Incapacitated patients given their faculties again, even for a few hours, is groundbreaking. Have you published your findings anywhere?”

Sophia felt the familiar pang in her stomach when she thought about the groundbreaking research trapped, like her, on the island. She picked up the mice and returned them to their cages.

“You haven't gone public with this, have you? Any of it,” Jonathan said. “He's got you doing all of this just for him.”

Sophia just looked at him and didn't say anything. Even without speech, Jonathan seemed to get the message.

“Wait a minute. Christ, he can get out of that chair and walk around? Even for a little while?”

After looking at Jonathan for a few more silent moments, Sophia finally said: “Yes.”

“But if the same donor restriction applies to humans . . .” Jonathan trailed off. She figured he either reasoned it out for himself or didn't want to know the answer. She wished she didn't.

For years, pristine donor samples had arrived in a prepared state, neatly packaged and labeled “Kring Laboratories: Human Samples.” But a few months ago, like so much of Kring Industries, the research facility was sold off. When the inventory of samples was exhausted, new samples started to come in. Sloppily prepared and sometimes damaged samples. No packaging. No labeling. For fear of hearing what she thought she would, Sophia had kept her questions to herself and buried herself in her work. Something that now tore at her soul.

Unable to keep facing him, Sophia turned away from Jonathan and closed the animal cages. She looked at the creatures behind the bars through blurring vision, realizing for the first time how similar to her they really were. But before her melancholy could reach a crescendo, she felt Jonathan's arms slip around her from behind. Her breath caught and she reflexively leaned back into him, feeling his warm body against her back.

Then she felt the cold steel against her throat.

“What—­”

“I'm sorry, but I don't have any choice,” he said. “You seem like a good kid and it's pretty obvious you're not aligned with your psychotic father, but he is your father. I'm betting if he sees a knife to your throat he'll let me and my daughter out of here, no matter what he had planned for me.”

“I . . . I don't understand,” Sophia said. “Your daughter? Who's your daughter?” She resisted the urge to fight, not wanting the blade to dig into her neck.

“You really don't know, do you?”

“Know what?”

“Your father wants me to steal something for him. He's holding my daughter somewhere in this complex as leverage.”

“What? That's . . . that's impossible,” Sophia said with little conviction. Kidnapping? Was he really that far gone?

“I don't want to hurt you, but if I can't speak to her, make sure she's okay . . .”

Jonathan turned Sophia, keeping the steel pressed to her throat, and slowly walked her toward the front of the lab. No doubt to make an impression on Nathan and Lara the second they walked back through the door.

“You don't know where she is?” Sophia asked.

“No, but I'd bet she's on the third level. It's the only one your father didn't show me in his grand tour.”

Then Sophia had an idea. An idea that might get the knife off her throat and let her take a swipe at Nathan.

“I'll take you to her. Let me help you,” Sophia said. She felt the metal against her throat ease up.

“You'd do that? Go against your father?”

“Yes.”

Moments stretched out while he considered the offer. It was an odd situation. Even with the steel against her skin, she felt sorry for him. She knew firsthand what her father could do to ­people. He pushed them to their breaking point and beyond, then sat back and observed their reaction like she watched her animals react to experiments.

“How do I know I can trust you?” Jonathan said, the edge eased from his voice.

“You don't,” Sophia said, knowing there was nothing she could say to guarantee her veracity. If she lied to manipulate him, even in this situation, she'd be no better than her father.

Then she felt the cold steel lift from her skin as he took his arm away. He gently pushed her away from him. The backs of her thighs, her buttocks, and her back seemed to burn in the cool air from their loss of contact. She turned around and saw that the knife at her throat had actually been a metal ruler he'd taken from her desk when she was in the bathroom.

He tossed the ruler on a workstation, seeming almost out of breath from the episode. No, not the episode. Worry for his daughter. He looked like he was feeling physical pain over her plight. Sophia fantasized about what it would be like to have a father like that.

“So how do we get past the guards?” Jonathan asked.

“Follow me.”

9:20
A.M.

“Y
OU'RE NOT THINKING
straight,” Lara said as she followed her father into his office.

“Sit down,” Nathan said. Lara ignored him, which he had tolerated in the past, but it had been happening more and more.

“Who knows what Hall's doing down there right now. And Sophia, don't get me started about her. He's probably filling her head full of—­”

Nathan rammed his desk with his wheelchair. Mementos and stacks of paper slid off and crashed to the floor, along with most of the copies of
The Monarch'
s Reign
, which fell from the shelves and revealed his real library of books behind them.

“I said sit down.”

After a moment, Lara slumped into one of the chairs in front of his desk. Nathan's gaze never left her as he did his best to convey his anger in his current state.

“Well? What is it?” Lara asked when the silence drew out.

“I called Canton last night to give him an update and to know when to expect his guests,” Nathan said.

“You . . . you should've let me take care of—­”

“Lara,” Nathan said. Lara looked like she'd been caught not only in the cookie jar, but burning down the cookie factory.