They’re not lurkers.
They’re the people who created them.
CHAPTER 29
His name is Winston, and he’s the brains behind Project Phoenix.
How do I know that? While two of his goons return to the SUV, driving off who knows where, the man with the black eyes and red tie instructs the other three to grab each one of us by the nape of the neck, herding us to the NRI building. The glass doors open, as though they recognize the men, and we’re marched inside a lab that is sterile and clean, yet smells like caramel.
Not burnt sugar. Not like the rot of a lurker, but close enough.
Because that’s what they are. Lurkers who have their wits about them. Lurkers who can talk, who can go out in the sunlight, who can control their hunger. Oh, they get all of the upside. They’re fast. They’re strong.
They’re indestructible.
Because that’s what the Injection was meant to do. What the scientists who worked for the NRI had spent years working on.
Project Phoenix. A state-of-the-art medication that, like the National Resilience Institute was instructed by the USgovernment to create, was designed to turn ordinary Americans into superhumans.
Or, as Winston explained after he led us into an empty office, forced us into three of the four visitor chairs before taking the one behind the expensive-looking desk, it was meant to make us, “The perfect blend of human and monster. Strong enough to withstand anything, powerful enough to conquer any who oppose us, and as close to immortal as we can be. Like the phoenix, we would rise up from the ashes of a world on fire and then our administration would rule it.”
Fuck that.
I’ve always hated the government. Not like I’m an anarchist or anything. I just don’t believe that, even in the before times, they did enough to help us ordinary people. Hearing that theyplannedthe Injection, that they were trying to turn the American population into some kind of supersoldiers… yeah. That doesn’t sit right with me at all.
And that’s not even counting that they obviously failed somewhere. Project Phoenix was Project Fuck-up as far as I’m concerned, but I know better than to interject. It’s probably not a good sign that Winston is offering us all of this information unprompted.
Maybe it’s because he thinks highly of himself and this project and just wants to show off.
Or maybe?—
“The first trials were done on volunteers in the NRI. As you can see,” he says, gesturing at himself, “they were a success. Apart from a newfound intolerance of the sun and bright lights, Project Phoenix did what it was supposed to do.”
Then, in case we need any other evidence of how fucking amazing Winston is, he rises from his chair, bends down behind his desk, and, with one hand, lifts the whole damn thing two feet off the ground.
That looks like mahogany to me. That sucker’s gotta weigh close to four hundred pounds and he’s holding itwith one hand.
Message received. As if one of the other goons snapping Mav’s forearm like a twig wasn’t proof enough of how impossibly strong they are…
“In case it didn’t, some of our finest minds had a backup plan,” Winston says, setting the desk back down on the floor. “Unfortunately, the antidote wasn’t… let’s say,perfected.” Again, he gestures toward his face, drawing attention to the shades that the agents wear even indoors. “By the time we worked out the bugs on that, the president had insisted that we push through the most recent batch of PP-56”—the Injection, I’m betting—“that was unfortunately… tainted. A sad mistake. When it was designed to go into effect, it… turned.”
No, asshole. ItTurned.
There’s that rage bubbling up inside of me. I couldn’t give a fuck about the sunglasses-wearing prick standing behind me. I know he was ordered to keep his hand on my neck during our march to the NRI because it would take a twitch of his damn pinkie to snap it. The threat was real. They had us, and we had no choice but to go with them.
He could kill me now. Considering Winston had gone to great trouble to capture us before we could blow up their building—almost as if he knew or suspected something like that could happen as we approached the NRI—he has to have a reason. Add that to how he’s still giving us all of this information like a villain monologuing… either I’m safe or I’m dead either way, and I might as well let out some of my rage before it burns a hole in my gut.
“Because of your tainted medicine? Because your stupid fucking president”—who made a big display of taking the Injection on TV, one of the first to do it, and who inevitably became one of the first lurkers to Turn… though, I remember,the white house kept that under wraps until their commander-in-chief chowed down on his press secretary in front of TV cameras and there was no one left to create the spin for him—“released an untested medication to thirty percent of the population? Millions of people died that day!”
The lurkers have decimated America for a half-assed science project?
“Yes,” Winston says, and there isn’t a hint of emotion in his pale face. No shame. No regret. “The antidotes were too late to save many. And… well… a cage didn’t work to contain certain indispensable individuals as it should have. That will have to be adjusted for the next phase of Project Phoenix.”
“Next phase?”
Next phase?
He nods, seemingly bored—and I loathe him.
