“They were working on a vaccine.”
He startled. “How’d you know that?”
“They planned to test it on friends of mine.”
The anger swelled again, fresh as the day the curtain had lifted on this whole sick scenario—the pure burn of fury, hot enough to cauterize wounds.
Almost.
“I don’t get it. They don’t have the virus. How’d they test it?”
“There’s another sample.”
No.A shock went through him, sizzled at his extremities, set off a buzzing in his head. “Where?”
“Discovered under the ice in Antarctica.”
“Shit.If they’ve got the damn thing, then what do they want me for?”
“Theydon’thave it.” He could hear the smile in her voice. She sounded self-satisfied. He figured she’d probably earned that feeling. “We got to it first. Took it with us.”
He blinked. “You have the virus?”
“We do.” He didn’t need daylight to feel the weight of her gaze. “Just barely got it out before the entire testing facility was razed to the ground. Until that moment, we had no idea how big this was. Thought it was just Chronos, but…” She shook her head, as if in the throes of her own traumatic memories. “Blowing up an Antarctic research station? That’s some massive firepower.”
That had happened before they’d met, and still the relief he felt was palpable, as if he’d lived through the fear of almost losing her. The feeling was as heady as his first sip of booze after months out here, but deeper, more permanent.
“What are the applications for this…weapon? Did Turner say?”
He shook his head, unwilling to let himself get swamped by it all over again.
“Elias.” She set her hand on his arm.
He stared down, though he couldn’t see more than the shape of them joined in that place.
“Applications? Kill everyone. Absolute devastation.”
“Like, nuclear?”
“Cleaner, was how they put it. No environmental ‘side effects.’ In fact, they’d apparently sold it to the government higher-ups as the simple, sterile method. No more war. Just nice, neat, blameless slaughter. Population cleansing.”
“Did you go to someone with this? Media? Anyone?”
“Everyone. Dies.” He said the two words with absolute finality.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Yeah.”
“All of them.” He thought of the journalist he’d talked to—a woman who worked for thePost. Dead. Her editor. Dead. “Everyone this thing touches dies. They all die.” He took a breath, let it out. “I killed men, Leo.Idid it to survive.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
“No. No, you need to know. I may have been a law-abiding citizen when this started, but I did some of the things they accused me of.”
An image pulsed in his mind, as clear as the day it happened. The words came out like pulling shards of glass from his innards, each extraction painful but necessary. “My parents’ murderers were still there when I arrived. At their house. No idea if they were government agents or…consultants.” He couldn’t keep the poison from his voice. “Those bastards are dead. I made sure of it.” There’d been nothing noble about slitting the first man’s throat. Nothing clean or good or whole. Revenge hadn’t been the soul cleanser he’d hoped for. If anything, it had brought him down to their level.
“Elias.” His name was a ripple in the cold night air, a dip in pressure.
“It’s better for you to know these things.”
