“No!” she snapped, and then she abruptly moderated her tone. “I mean, yes, of course everything’s fine. Brittany’s cured. She’s fine. Let her go home.”
A cheer went up from everyone standing there.
“But how?” one of the men asked. Dr. Thorton, according to his ID. “How was she cured?”
Everyone looked at Cecilia, himself included. How to explain Brittany’s miraculous recovery?
She grimaced, looking defeated even as she spoke with clear authority. “I don’t think she had it in the first place.”
“Of course, she did. Look at her files.”
“Don’t bother,” Cecilia said, her voice tight. “It’s corrupted. We’ll have to try to reconstruct it from memory.”
The men looked at Cecilia, then again back at Brittany. “So she never had the Flu to begin with?”
“Well, obviously she had a flu,” a nurse said. “Just not the Detroit Flu.” The woman smiled at Brittany. “Honey, you are so lucky. You dodged a big bullet here.”
Literally given that the two security guards were just now putting their guns away.
“So what do we do now? Just discharge her?” Dr. Thorton asked.
Cecilia blew out a breath. “She’s fine. She’s healthy.” She glanced back at the Brittany and her parents. “Hank will get you all the information you need.” She dropped her hands to her side. “I’m going back to the lab.”
She walked away, her steps clipped and angry. Behind her, the other doctors were still talking. “So our one good case isn’t a case after all? They all die?”
“Looks that way,” Dr. Thorton said. “Bloody hell.”
Hank watched everyone disperse. He knew from experience it would feel weirdly surreal. People going through motions as if nothing life shattering had happened here. As if they couldn’t wait to get rid of the strange people who challenged their grip on reality. And not a one commented that Abby was wearing a blanket around her torso rather than a blouse.
All back to normal. Denial or magic or something else. He didn’t know, but he’d seen it before. And now Cecilia saw how the shifter world survived in the shadows.
Clearly, she wanted nothing to do with it.
