1 Piseckého, Prague, Czech Republic
November 30
“What are you going to do?” Anouma called to the Healer as he made his way down the back stairwell at Eva’s building.
He lost his balance briefly, hit the wall and left a dark red smear. He put his other foot down to the next step, but it missed the edge and he stumbled down, landing on his weakened elbow, and the spots overtook his vision. He shook his head again and again, trying to regain control.
He got to his feet, used his good arm to guide himself down the steps, watching his footing carefully.
“What are you doing?” Anouma shouted, stopping a few steps up.
The Healer came to a rest, turned to face her, but missed her face.
“I am going to cure your brother.”
* * *
The blood trail led to the front of a building Sobotka and Crew knew well, so when they came within a few houses, they leapt out of Crew’s car and sprinted the rest of the way, guns drawn. An old woman stood in the hallway around the corner, staring at fragments of a broken door. She was dressed in a night gown, slippers, seemed confused and concerned.
“I haven’t called you yet,” she said to them.
“Go back inside, ma’am,” said Sobotka, edging closer to the door.
“She really is a nice girl,” the woman said, her mind switching gears and tones suddenly. “Just like her mother. A real beauty.”
Sobotka nodded to the woman, trying to be patient, but Crew had no tact left: he grabbed her night gown and dragged her back, threw her into her apartment, and closed the door. The two of them stayed by the broken door, guns ready.
“Police!” Sobotka called. “Keep your hands in the air and do not move!”
“I’m alone!” cried Eva from inside, and they checked each other, confused.
Sobotka peeked around the corner cautiously, then led herself and Crew in, making a sweep of the rooms. Eva’s mother lay dead on the sofa, blood all over the kitchen, a knife, footprints and water everywhere… and there sat Eva at the coffee table, hands flying madly across the trackpad of an incubator.
“Ms Kolikov, what are you—”
“Listen,” Eva said, eyes glued to the screen, “I need you to shut up. You can arrest me and beat me up all you like, but I’ve got to finish what I’m doing.”
Sobotka put her gun away, edged around the side. Crew kept his weapon out, but aimed at the floor, frowning.
“What are you doing?”
“There’s an outbreak at the hospital, I have to cure it before it spreads.”
“How do you know about the outbreak?” Sobotka asked.
“One of the doctors told me. Now seriously, shut up so I can concentrate!”
Sobotka slid over next to Crew, spoke in a hushed voice.
“She’s telling the truth?”
“Could be that Anouma woman I was looking for. She’s a friend of the Healer’s. Still, Kolikov and an incubator can’t be a good combination.”
Sobotka watched Eva a moment, twitched an eye.
“Call in to the hospital and see what their status is. I don’t trust her, but I don’t want to shut this down if it can help.”
Crew nodded reluctantly, headed to the hall with his phone. Sobotka crouched next to Eva, watched her working. A tourniquet was still strung tight around her arm, a small drip falling around to her elbow. Eva was handling a small vial of blood, searching the side of the machine, probing with shaking hands.
“I can’t figure out where this thing goes in…” she cursed, slamming her bandaged arm on the table in frustration and then cursing some more.
Sobotka took the vial from her, darted around the side of the machine, saw a port there, and pushed the vial in. It clicked solidly, then the incubator rotated the blood out of sight, and began to purr.
“Thanks,” Eva said, eyes darting wildly. “I’m having a hard time focusing right now.”
An alert popped onto the screen:
Custom blood sample detected.
Override locale settings?
Eva accepted the change, and threw herself into cracking the virus code once more.
* * *
The Healer burst into Adjobi’s room, Anouma close behind, and came to a sudden stop at the base of the bed. Adjobi sat up, wary and weary and somehow sicker than before as the Healer pulled another needle from his bag and started filling it with serum. His arm was stiff and awkward, and he struggled to hold himself steady.
“Do you know what this is?” he asked as he filled the syringe. “This is the cure to the disease you sent me after.”
Adjobi seemed surprised by this, tried to sit up.
“Really…” he said, his eyes wide with curiosity, but still fear.
“Yes,” said the Healer, pulling the needle free and holding it ready. “It has killed two people already. Let us try for three.”
He plunged the needle into Adjobi’s arm and pushed the plunger down, and Adjobi groaned loudly, jerked suddenly but couldn’t fight the strength of the Healer.
“No!” Anouma screamed, pounding on the Healer’s back, until he was done, pulled the needle free, and stepped back. Anouma collapsed to the floor, weeping.
The Healer felt a powerful release, he stumbled, caught on to the railing at the side of the bed, and leaned on it, transferring all his reliance there, all the strength he’d been drawing suddenly gone. His suit was whining in his ear that he was too excited, but he already knew.
Adjobi looked down at the needle mark in his arm, the blood dripping around and onto the sheets, and then looked up at the Healer with a calm stare. And then, ever so slightly, he smiled.
Anouma saw her brother, saw his expression, and her crying trailed off. She got to her knees, took his hand, but he pulled it away, his smile turning into a smirk.
The Healer stumbled, held on to the bed tighter.
“You have no vector,” he said to Adjobi, faint and tired. “You are the vector.”
Anouma looked from Adjobi to the Healer, then back, her crying stopped, her mouth ajar, trying to understand what was going on.
“What are you talking about?” she gasped. “He’s sick, he was infected by… by someone else… he’s the victim! And you’ve killed him!”
The Healer didn’t listen to her. He was watching Adjobi, saw the sickly man start to laugh, laugh so awkwardly it was painful. And then, finally, when Adjobi calmed himself enough, he looked at the Healer with intense anger.
“You are clever,” he said. “But I would bet you’re too late.”
* * *
Crew burst back in the room, eyes wide with fear or excitement.
“Sestak just passed down the order… they’re going to gas the hospital! We’ve got to move!”
Eva and Sobotka both gaped.
“They’re what?”
“Sestak’s afraid of a major outbreak across the city. He’s full-on paranoid from the sound of it. They’ve sealed the doors and the army is moving in to gas and burn the place down. The captain’s ordered us there to provide backup. In case anyone makes it outside.”
“Are they insane?” Sobotka yelled, getting to her feet furiously. “All those people… there are over ten thousand people in there!”
Eva kept moving blocks around, pushing the cure further, watching the antibodies in her blood react horribly to every option she threw at it.
“I can fix this,” she said, mostly to herself. “Just give me five minutes. I can fix it, and we can stop the outbreak. I just need five minutes of quiet. Please.”
Sobotka looked to Crew, who didn’t seem keen on the idea. She looked back to Eva.
“You’ve got five minutes,” she said.
Eva nodded, then flinched, jabbed her elbow out and to the side.
“Fuck off!” she spat.
Sobotka and Crew took a cautious step backwards.
“What’s going on?” Sobotka asked.
Eva didn’t look up, rolled her eyes as she worked.
“I’m gonna say some strange things for the next little while,” she said darkly. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not going to be around for much longer.”
Eva ran the test, saw the familiar shapes falling and disappearing as her cure broke down Nuremberg-6. But instead of leaving no traces, the screen warned her:
Antibody conflict. See report.
She clicked through, and her jaw dropped open at the sight.
“Oh shit,” she gasped.
“What?” demanded Sobotka. “What’s wrong?”
“The cure, it leaves stupid little fragments in the blood, stuff that doesn’t do any harm. Simple compounds. See? These little grey squares. They shouldn’t impact anything. They didn’t impact anything when I ran this before.”
Sobotka leaned in, couldn’t see what Eva was seeing.
“So what’s different?”
“There’s something in my blood that’s not in the incubator’s base profile. Something I’ve got that isn’t standard, or wasn’t standard when they made this thing. Something my mother, Richard, and probably you and everyone else in this city… something we’ve all got in common. The cure is making things worse! It’s too perfect… it’s a trap, and I fell for it!”
* * *
The Healer threw the syringe across the room, tried to fight the urge to strangle the man.
“This is no game!” he shouted.
“No it isn’t!” growled Adjobi, trying to sit up. “This is far too sad to be a game! You, all of you, worrying over these people, with their home-made sickness, hoping to God that you can save them, find them a cure! This is no game… this is a farce! And you need to see why!”
Anouma gasped, let go of Adjobi, looked to the Healer, her face so overcome she had no expression. The Healer composed himself, stepped back from the bed, had to focus.
“You created a virus, designed it brilliantly,” he said. “So the cure, the treatment, would be lethal.”
Adjobi smiled proudly now.
“It was not easy,” he said simply.
“But it won’t hurt you,” the Healer growled. “Because your blood is missing the compound it needs to kill. The compounds that survive attach to something already there, create a new virus with them. A deadly one. A terrible one. What is it? What are you targeting?”
Adjobi closed his eyes, rested his head back, and took a deep breath. Anouma was now further away, looking shocked, confused.
“Four years ago,” said Adjobi, his voice weaker now, distant. “Four years ago I met a girl. Beautiful woman, so perfect. So perfect I knew I must win her, marry her, keep her close. You met her, Anouma. Do you remember? Nowa?”
Anouma nodded, like in a dream.
“We were happy,” he said, his eyes still closed. “For a time. And then, one day, one day she got sick, and the doctors told us: AIDS. Can you believe it? AIDS! But I… I don’t know, we were so young, so naïve, we thought it would be all right. There were drugs, weren’t there? Treatments? They’d had them for years, hadn’t they? We’d be all right.”
Adjobi opened his eyes, looked straight into the soul of the Healer.
“She died,” he said, his voice a whisper. “she died of AIDS, a disease dead outside Africa, all because the vaccine stopped being made. It wasn’t vital anymore! There were new threats! Greater threats! And my Nowa died in her bed for nothing! Nothing but weakness and greed and throwing a whole continent to the dogs!”
Adjobi pointed a trembling finger at the Healer.
“A disease is not dead until it is wiped from the face of the whole planet.”
He clenched his hand into a fist, shook it slightly, and exhaled, his long, painful secret finally gone.
“The cure targets the AIDS vaccine,” gasped the Healer.
* * *
Rhodri held her tight, caressing her body as he nuzzled her ear. Eva didn’t even flinch, pushing blocks around, watching the fallout, watching the changes as they shot across the screen. Stroke, paralysis, kidney failure… they came and went as fast as her hands would move.
“Why don’t you give it up so we can have some fun?” Rhodri whispered. “I can make it worth your while.”
“Stop yakking. I’m busy here.”
He cupped her breasts in his hands, kissed her neck.
“I wonder how long until you can’t see the screen anymore, and you’re mine forever?” he said, licking gently.
Eva dropped a blue square into place, and then the results came through…
Warning:
Patient develops mild fever
She grinned, looked Rhodri clear in the face, kissed him back.
“Say goodnight, fucker.”
She ran off, down the hall, into her mother’s office, and pulled out the other two boxes of refill tubes, got halfway back to the living room when she noticed they were damp at the bottom. She stopped midway, mouth gaping, dumped the contents. The tubes were nearly empty. Cracked. Leaking. Lost.
“Oh no,” he gasped as Rhodri held her from behind.
“What’s wrong?” Sobotka asked, getting to her feet. “What are those?”
“The refills… we don’t have any more refills. I can only make one more batch of this stuff.”
“How many can it treat?” asked Crew.
Eva lowered her head, felt Rhodri on her neck, felt a shiver.
“Just one. The fix is contagious in its current form, but there’s no way we’d cover everyone fast enough. There’s just no way…”
They stood in silence. Rhodri held her tight, so tight, she felt it hard to breathe. The room started to grey around her, disappear into her mind like a dream she was waking from. She stumbled forward, onto her knees, and Rhodri was before her, kneeling too, white shirt undone, biting his lip, his dead eyes shining with glee.
“Can you feel it, Eva? Can you feel the end? It’s coming. I can tell it’s coming. Soon you’ll be mine forever.”
“I’ve still got the last dose. I can use it and burn you alive.”
“You’re not going to use the last dose on yourself, are you? And let all those people die?”
Eva stared him dead in the eye, and he kissed her. She tried to fight it, but it was so… so… she felt herself kissing back, felt his hands on her cheeks his body pressing against hers, and she shuddered, let him run his lips down her neck.
“Can you feel it?” he sang softly. “There’s love in the air…”
And she paused.
“The air!” she gasped, and shoved him off, scrambling to the table, pushing past the grey, dancing fingers on the trackpad as he pulled her waist, tried to draw her back. She scoured the screen, found it under the ‘Advanced’ menu… down at the bottom… “Make Aerosolized”.
* * *
“Every man, woman and child in Europe, the Americas, the East... they’re all targets!” boomed the Healer. “You would kill a whole world of people out of revenge?”
“Their suffering’s just as real to me, as mine is to them.”
The Healer didn’t say anything for a moment.
“Adjobi…” said Anouma, stepping closer. “you couldn’t…”
“No?” spat her brother, giving her an icy stare. “No? I would gladly fear the poison I made if it meant I’d been protected like the others in this wretched city! I’m dying of AIDS, Fanta, and there is no one in the world that will help me! Oh, I made the trigger, but they made the weapon! Let them burn, I say! Let them all burn!”
The Healer’s temper flared suddenly. He smashed one of the heart monitors against the wall so hard its casing shattered, and he threw the wreckage to the ground savagely.
“You made me your accomplice!” he shouted. “Kwong’s blood was tainted too! You set a trap and let me poison my own people!”
Adjobi laughed a bit, looked at the Healer, sickly again.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “You’re not alone. I’ve been working towards this for months.”
Anouma gasped, trembling.
“What do you mean? I thought we were here to help, Adjobi… I thought we were—”
“Oh, we were. And at first, I was like you, Fanta. I thought this was the most noble calling in the world. I knew my time would run out, but I wanted to die doing something good for the world. I had no regrets.
“But then one day, I met a man with a different sort of mission. He wasn’t content to just treat the symptoms, he wanted to cut the viruses down, here, in the field. We worked together, this Daniels and his partner. We found things nobody else would see for months, and we fixed them, Fanta. We saved so many lives.
“He had an incubator, and as I learned to use it, I realized I had it in my power to cure my AIDS, to patch your blood and save us both. Daniels was a pharmaceutical executive, so he’d have access to the vaccines. I asked him over and over again, and finally he told me he couldn’t help… he wouldn’t help, because it would get him caught, and our whole operation would fall apart.”
The Healer bowed his head, drifting. Anouma backed further away, terrified.
“I couldn’t stand it, Fanta,” Adjobi continued. “I couldn’t stand that he had the cure there, within his reach, and he denied it to me. It was too much. So I began learning the second function of the incubator, learned how to mix compounds badly, learned how to create poisons out of vaccines. I produced flawed results at the start, but I learned and improved.
“Their agents abroad, I took their compounds and made subtle tweaks. I broke their solutions and sent them back, ready to kill. Then they came to me, they asked: ‘How did this happen, Adjobi? How did it go so wrong?’, and I pleaded ignorance, said all was well when I saw the files last.
“Really, I was hoping Daniels would do as he promised, send my cures back to his company’s database, have them distributed around the world in one of those godforsaken boosters. Think of the carnage. Think of the justice!”
“That is not justice!” roared the Healer, staggering backward. “That is genocide!”
“Oh, that’s rich, coming from you! I’m not half the monster you are! Even when the outbreak downstairs claims half the city, my conscience is like untouched snow next to yours!”
“The outbreak…” Anouma gasped. “That was you?”
“It’s not a long walk to the supply room, Fanta,” he smiled. “And all it takes is a few millilitres of the virus to do the trick. In the coffee of a co-worker, a nip in the arm, a small prick in the IV bag.”
Anouma lowered her head, crying now.
“This was all supposed to take a very different path,” Adjobi said, sighing. “But I knew my time was running out, and Dr Kolikov saw the signature from those fools at the university in my work. The ones I hired to cover my tracks, and it lead her right to me. She started to investigate… I had to change things. I admit, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to see this through to the end… but I didn’t expect I’d get such a gift as you,” he said to the Healer, who stared at him, ragged. “You gave me a unique opportunity to become a very powerful vector.”
He grinned uncontrollably.
“I hope I will live to see the cure,” he said, faking his earlier, weaker voice. “Oh, how I pray I will see the cure.”
The Healer stepped back from the bed, looked at Anouma, then back at Adjobi. He faltered, fell to his knees, slipped forward, but clung to the bed rails, pulled himself up, sliding the blue pouch out on the bed.
“I’m ready now,” Adjobi said, lifting his arm up to the Healer. “Finish your duty before you die, Healer. I am ready to go.”
* * *
The car slid sideways through the turn, almost hitting a lamp post, Crew spinning the wheel furiously, punching the gas, trying to get back on track. Ice shot off the windshield and into the buildings around them, smashing into a bright mist.
“Slow down, idiot!” shouted Sobotka, gripping the passenger seat door desperately.
“It’s November!” Crew yelled. “I don’t slow down till January!”
Between them, Eva sat, doubled over, hands on the sides of her face, pulling her skin down madly. Rhodri was curled around her back, arms moving fluidly over her body, his mouth across her skin, everywhere, exposed or not, drawing her into the grey again. She trembled, muttered into her lap, soft and urgent.
“It’s all in my head. It’s not real, I know it’s not real.”
“Are you sure?” Rhodri asked smoothly as he licked her neck. “I seem real to me.”
“You’re dead. I killed you, and you’re dead.”
“Richard said I was still alive. And I’m coming for you. You should be happy…”
He held her tighter, and she felt warm, shuddered, leaned her head back and let him kiss her shoulders, her neck, feeling so warm… She squeezed her eyes shut to push him away. She heard nothing but him, but refused to lose sight of the world around her.
The car shot forwards, around another turn, and they saw it: barricades ahead. Four soldiers in full masks, guarding the entrance to the hospital. Sobotka winced.
“Is there another way in?” she asked.
“Yeah,” said Crew, switching gears. “Faster.”
The soldiers didn’t have time to react. The Aston-Martin shot through the single-beam barricade, throwing wood and yellow lights in all directions. Crew didn’t check the mirror to see what they’d done, he just pushed his foot straight to the floor they careened into the old emergency bay, skidding in a large arc, coming to a halt right next to the doors. Sobotka knocked her head on the car frame as the inertia left, looked to Crew with wide-open eyes.
“Don’t do that again.”
They got out of the car, hearing shouts in the distance as the soldiers gave chase, grabbed Eva by the arm and pushed into the foyer. Crew motioned to the great wooden doors, wrapped in yellow tape, a padlock across the handles.
“Shit, they’re competent all of a sudden!” he cursed.
“Stand back!” Sobotka yelled, pulled her gun out, took aim and the padlock exploded off the doors. Crew wrenched them open, stumbled into the mass of hysterical and dying patients, all clawing off their beds, trying to escape, falling apart at the sights and sounds of their worst nightmares. Sobotka staggered back, watching a nurse flail desperately as five bloodstained figures tried to drag her into a side room, wailing madly.
Bastien stormed towards them, mask nearly off his face, bloody slashes on his cheeks.
“You fools! Get out of here! It’s not safe!”
Crew held him back before the old doctor could reach them.
“They’re going to torch this place, doc. You know that, right?”
Bastien barely registered the news, nodded gravely.
“If they must. We’re ready to make that sacrifice.”
“Well I’m not!” shouted Sobotka, and then a staggering patient threw her off her feet and onto the ground.
Eva stumbled forward, Rhodri tugging at her pants, punched him away, but missed. She gasped, half-seeing the mess in the room. A lunatic like the beast from the university came at her, and she hit him across the side of the head, and unlike Rhodri, he collapsed down, scampering away. She fell onto her back, felt Rhodri climb on top of her, lean over her, feet pushing her legs apart.
“We never did have that last afternoon off,” he said, his voice quiet yet somehow louder than the pandemonium around them. “But now’s as good a time as any…”
Eva tried to turn her head from him, but he held her jaw with clutching hands, slammed her skull down onto the floor once as he kissed her, clawing angrily, holding her hostage. She fought, but he pinned her hand, kept her legs spread, and she couldn’t win, she couldn’t… she…
… she saw them.
“Sobotka!” she yelled through Rhodri, through everything, though she couldn’t see anything but him. “The fans! Use the fans!”
Sobotka pushed past Bastien, running to the row of switches by the door, pushed them all on. The lights above came to life, bathing them in a warm glow… and then, slowly, creaking, all the overhead fans began to move… swirling faster and faster.
Eva pulled the container from her pocket, fighting Rhodri’s strong grip, held it out with a trembling gaze towards Crew, who kept an uneasy distance, not understanding what she was seeing. She pushed against Rhodri, knocked him off, held the container up further.
“Hurry…” she whispered, and he took it.
“Sobotka!” Crew yelled, twisting the cap off the container, hands trembling. “Ready!”
“Go!” she called, and he threw the container into the air, over the beds, into the centre of the room. Sobotka watched it float, almost weightless, for what seemed like an eternity. And then, like a dandelion in the wind, the white dust inside began flowing out and into the air.
* * *
The Healer took a weak step back.
“Kill me!” Adjobi screamed. “I’m dead anyway! Do it!”
The Healer steadied himself, hand gripping the blue pouch, the deadly serum.
He stared evenly at Adjobi.
“No,” he said, and the sick man froze. “Mercy is not my commission.”
Adjobi started forward, but the Healer shoved him back into bed with a bloodied hand, suddenly strong again, suddenly dominating. Terrifying.
“You will die here in this bed, as slow as your disease takes you. I will not be an instrument in your game any longer. I will not be an instrument for anyone’s lunatic fantasies!”
Anouma stepped towards him, hand out, pausing…
“You will die. Your end will come slowly, and painfully, and there will be nothing you can do to ease your suffering. Because when all your caretakers are dead and buried by the carnage you wrought, there will be no one left to help you.”
And with that, the Healer turned, and walked towards the door. He heard a quick sob, and then Anouma ran after him, catching him in the hallway. She put a hand on his shoulder, and he let himself be turned around.
“I must warn my people about Kwong’s blood,” he gasped, faltering. “I cannot stand your tears now.”
She looked at him so sadly. She placed a hand on his chest and lowered her head, and whispered to him: “I am sorry for what he did. I am so sorry…”
The Healer took a deep breath, and the pain all over his body gripped him like a dull vice.
“You are not his master,” he said. “Do not let him be yours. I must go now, before… before…”
He slipped onto the floor, his vision blacking.
* * *
The dust caught the light as it fell in swirls around the room. Eva saw it through Rhodri’s strong embrace, and she smiled at it, breathed in heavily, smelled his sweat, the smell of that summer in Nuremberg.
He saw her smile, and his expression changed, angrier, deranged. He wrapped a callous hand around her face, lifted her head off the ground, even as his other hand stroked her gently.
“You like this?” he asked. “Is this good for you?”
“Yes…” she whispered. “Yes, it’s good.”
He slammed her head down on the ground, leaned in close.
“Then why did you leave me? Why did you kill me, Eva? Why?”
He slammed her again, but the pain passed through her, and she started to laugh. His hands were becoming fainter, his face less opaque. He noticed it, too, grabbed her head with both hands, leaning in close, furious, nose to hers.
“Eva!” he seethed, then suddenly his expression changed. Desperate, scared, alone… he started to cry, stroked her cheeks gently, rested his head on her chest, holding her, holding…
“Eva, please… please, I love you. Please don’t do this… please don’t…”
She lay there, unmoving, felt his hands dissolving, the breaths fainter, the weight of him on her melting away.
“Eva, I love you… I love you…” he said, his voice a whisper.
“I know,” she said. “I loved you too.”
Just then, a patient fell over her, legs smashing her ribs, and she rolled to her side, the sound of the room coming back full-force. The screams had been replaced by quiet whimpers, calls of pain, strong commands from the medical staff as they ran through the aisles, putting things back in order. Eva got to her feet, unsteady, and was caught under the arm by Sobotka.
“You okay?” she asked, and Eva nodded.
“It’ll take a while to go away completely. Plus the fever. But I’m fine. Thanks.”
Crew strode up, tossing a blood-stained patient out of his way as he went. He surveyed the damage.
“So I guess it worked,” he said. “We knocked the disaster down a notch.”
“I guess so,” Eva smiled. “If you happen to see the Healer or Dr Anouma again, tell them thanks for me.”
Crew nodded agreeably, staring off into the back of the room. His gaze shifted back to Eva, at the same time Sobotka let her go, frowning seriously.
“Them,” they said together.
* * *
The Healer pushed himself to his feet, staggering forward, Anouma pulling him back, or trying to help, or… he stumbled again. Then, down the hallway two lights trained themselves on him. He couldn’t understand the words, but knew what they meant. He stayed perfectly still, swaying slightly.
Anouma called to them in Czech; they yelled something back, and she held out both her hands towards them, but they dragged her away.
They grabbed him by the back of his suit and threw him, face-first into the wall. They kicked his legs and he fell to his knees, his arms pulled up — he coughed out a gagging cry as his shoulder was moved — and he heard the sound of a gun clicking behind his head.
There was more talking, Anouma’s, and the armed woman, and a deeper, angry man. Anouma was frantic in her foreign tongue; she was telling them all the deeds he’d done, all the killing, about her brother’s plight. He blinked slowly, nearly fell.
“Forgive me,” he said softly in his native language. “May there be future generations left to curse my name… please…”
And then the Healer felt another grip under his arm, and he was lifted from the ground, turned towards the stairwell, and shoved so suddenly he fell onto the floor, his body exploding with pain, it was as if he’d been shot again. He stayed there for a moment, his suit deafening.
But now the silence was different. He heard his own mask, heard the breaths he took, but nothing else. The sounds of the two police were distant, were fading away, and when he opened his eyes, their lights were gone, too. He lay there in the dark, felt his heart beating.
And when he blinked again, Anouma was leaning over him, her hand on his back, rubbing him gently. Her eyes were wet, but the look on her face was not disgust… concern. Concern?
“Can you walk?” she asked quietly.
He nodded, slowly.
“I told them,” she said, her voice wavering, her awful confession reluctantly coming forth. “I told them you need to warn your people. About Adjobi’s virus.” She bit her lip, tried to keep from crying, refused to look back towards her brother’s room. “I told them why.”
She helped him to his feet, and he started towards the stairwell, slipping in his own blood. He stumbled again, and she tried to catch him, but the weight was too much, and he fell down, face hitting the floor… he heard her around him, calling him back, but his vision blurred, echoed softly, and the darkness slowly soaked him away.
