Lyle realized he was holding his breath, as if he could avoid breathing the entire time he was in the building. ReBirth might be the most prominent threat in the building, but it was far from the deadliest.
Is that Cynthia’s plan? he wondered. Would she really risk taking anything else out of here? Nobody’s that power hungry. He noticed her purse was gone, left back in the changing room. Does she still have the gun?
They left the sterilizer and entered the building beyond, walking through a series of corridors and going down a pair of staircases to a storage room underground. Dr. Shorey paused in front of the door. “I don’t suppose I can convince you to wait out here?”
“We promised the group we’d go together,” said Cynthia. Lyle only nodded in agreement, feeling his stomach twist itself into knots. Shorey sighed and opened the insulated door; Lyle felt a soft puff of cold air wash out of the blackness before a motion sensor clicked on a series of bright fluorescent lights. They followed Shorey inside, and she led them past rows of flat metal cabinets. Inside of each metal door, Lyle knew, was a powerful contagion, packed and sealed and cushioned and protected from every possible form of disaster. Except, of course, for the disaster they were about to create on purpose. Dr. Shorey opened the drawer marked REBIRTH, and reached for the sample vial inside.
Cynthia put her hand on the doctor’s.
Lyle stepped forward, reaching out to stop whatever was about to happen, but neither woman moved. Dr. Shorey looked at Cynthia. “What are your intentions, Ms. Mummer?”
“What are yours?”
Shorey’s eye narrowed. “I’m going to take this sample back to the others, just like we said.”
“And after that?”
Neither hand moved. Neither woman blinked. Lyle looked back and forth between them, wondering if he should step in. Was Cynthia still armed? Was this her big move? Did she know something about the doctor he didn’t?
“There are only two options left,” said Cynthia. “In the first, this is a nightmare we wake up from. The world we fled manages to put itself back together, worse for wear but repairable in some form. We go home, we rejoin the government, we carve our new niche in whatever power structure replaces the old one. I do not think this scenario is likely, but I’m too careful to count it out.”
“Careful or paranoid?”
“That’s our best-case scenario,” said Cynthia. “If planning for the best-case scenario is paranoid, we’re in a lot more trouble than we’ve dared to admit.”
Shorey said nothing.
“In the second option,” Cynthia continued, “this is it. Lyle’s hellfire and damnation sermon was correct, and we’re stuck on this island for the rest of our lives. The extreme measures we’ve proposed to deal with that situation are no longer ridiculous but necessary to our survival. We start a new colony here, self-contained and self-sustaining, and it will be generations before we can even think about leaving. The power structure here will be smaller than the one in option one, but it will still exist, and it will affect us more directly, and we will be able to climb much higher in it. Do you know who will control that power structure?”
The doctor’s eyes had lost their ferocity; Cynthia’s cold presentation of the facts had affected her. She nodded. “The power will go to whoever controls this lotion sample.”
Cynthia mirrored her nod. “And what about option one? Who controls the power structure in that scenario?”
The doctor thought a moment before responding. Her breath puffed out in nervous clouds. “Whoever controls this lotion sample.”
“Exactly,” said Cynthia. “Now here’s the biggest question of all, and I want you to think very carefully: Who controls this lotion sample?”
“Realistically?” asked Shorey. “Whoever has a gun.”
Cynthia’s other hand appeared from behind the open drawer, holding her small handgun—not aiming it at anyone, just holding it. Lyle stepped back. “The purest form of power,” Cynthia said, “and at least one-tenth of the law. What are the other nine-tenths?”
“You don’t need to treat me like a child,” the doctor snarled.
“I want to treat you like an ally,” said Cynthia, “but I need you to give me something first. I’m not going to use it, I’m not going to steal it, I’m not going to do anything the group doesn’t agree on. But I am going to hold it, and that, as we’ve discussed, is the only thing that really matters.”
The doctor looked at her, and at the gun, and slowly removed her hand from the lotion sample. Cynthia picked it up with a small smile. “Thank you, Doctor. I hope this is the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship.”
62
Thursday, December 13
10:34 P.M.
Plum Island Animal Disease Center, Long Island
1 DAY TO THE END OF THE WORLD
The dying man was unconscious, wracked with fever; his broken ankle was swollen and discolored. Cynthia held the sample vial carefully, the lid open, and the room full of refugees watched in anxious silence as Lyle dipped in a Q-tip, dabbed it on the man’s skin, and waited. Inside the fat white drop a million tiny retroviruses scanned his DNA, copied it, and spread it like a plague to each of their neighbors, over and over in a growing cascade. A tiny invisible cataclysm. A moment later Lyle touched the Q-tip back down on the dying man’s skin, smearing it around, rubbing it deep into his tissue, and in that instant the man became a fallen god: eternal, immortal, and changeless, and damned. Lyle wiped the man clean with a thick rubber glove, and sealed both glove and Q-tip in a hazardous materials bag from the lab. Cynthia closed the vial and tucked it safely in her pocket.
“It’s done,” said the general. “Let’s get back to work.”
“Work if you want,” said Lyle. “I’m going to sleep.” He left the room, walking quickly back to his own. Cynthia called after him, but he ignored her. He didn’t want to hear her, he didn’t want to see her, he didn’t want to see anybody.
Why didn’t I stop her? he thought. That’s why I was there. To stop her from abusing the lotion.
But she’s not abusing it; she’s just holding it.
Or is ReBirth really so powerful that simply holding it is enough?
He’d once told NewYew they were irresponsible, doing something so bad it was like giving guns to mentally disabled children, but he’d been wrong. He was the mental case here—he was the idiot, the half-wit, the brain-damaged fool who’d found a technology he couldn’t understand, and used it wrong, and ended the world. Now there was nobody left but the carrion feeders, Cynthia and the general and everybody else, snapping at the carcass and ripping it to shreds until there was nothing left but bones and skin and maggots.
He reached his room and slammed the door, standing in the center of the floor and breathing. Thinking. Trying, at least, to think of something positive.
Someone knocked on his door, and he turned around to see Lilly push it open and peek through the gap. He sighed, feeling hollow and defeated. She opened the door a little farther.
“You want to talk?” she asked.
