“I’ll deal with it.”
She rubbed a hand across her forehead, her eyes closed. “If you do this, you can’t fail,” she whispered.
“I have no intention of failing.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“I won’t fail. Better?”
It wasn’t.
While they waited in the hallway that connected the comm room with the rest of the base, Leon, Crystal, Dennis, and Paul couldn’t help but speculate on what Rachel and Matt were talking about. But any attempt to find out came to an abrupt halt the moment the door flew open, and Rachel, her face strained, strode out.
“How’s Chloe?” Leon asked.
Rachel looked at them as if she hadn’t expected them to be there. “Chloe? Um, she fell off a roof, but she’ll be okay.”
“How did that happen?” Dennis asked.
Rachel started walking away again, but went only a few feet before she turned back. “Have we heard from Tamara and Bobby this morning? Have they made any progress?”
The others all looked at Paul. He was the one who’d last spoken to the former PCN reporter and her cameraman.
“No contact yet today,” Paul said.
“I need to talk to them as soon as possible.”
“Uh, sure. I’ll see what I can do.”
Rachel walked off without another word.
“Now I really want to know what’s going on,” Leon whispered to Crystal as they filed back into the room.
Returning to their respective desks, they got back to work. For Leon, that meant trying to tease out what the series of numbers he’d written down from the radio message meant. Not coordinates. Not a phone number. A web address?
Though the Internet had become spotty, with many websites unreachable as servers began to malfunction, other sites still worked exactly as they had been designed to do. He typed the number into his browser and hit ENTER.
WEB ADDRESS UNKNOWN
Not a web address, then. At least not one that worked anymore.
Taking the shotgun approach next, he pasted the number in the box of a still functioning search engine, and clicked. He was presented with a long list of links, but none were direct hits.
He was running out of ideas fast, and was tempted to consider it a dead end. But someone out there had broadcast it, someone who was still alive. He had to exhaust every possibility.
That’s when he realized he had never dialed the exact number he’d written it down, but only tried alternate country codes. Given that there was no 881, he was sure he’d experience the same failure as earlier, but in the interest of being thorough, he had to make the attempt.
He punched the numbers into his phone app.
No series of tones. No call failed message.
A ring.
He slapped Crystal on the arm.
“Hey! Watch it!” she said.
He turned on the external speakers just in time to catch the third ring.
“Who are you calling?” she asked.
“The number,” he said, holding up the piece of paper.
“But it didn’t work.”
“I didn’t try it exactly like—”
“Hailo?” A man’s voice, tentative and surprised.
“Hello?” Leon said. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes. Can.”
The person on the other end sounded older, with an accent Leon couldn’t place yet.
“Were you broadcasting your phone number on the radio?”
“Yes! Yes! Radio. Number. Thank you, call.”
“You’re welcome. My name is Leon. Who are you?”
“Wait. Wait.”
There was movement over the line, and then nothing.
“Hello?” Leon said. “Hello?”
“Are you still connected?” Crystal asked.
According to the computer, he was. He tapped the button that would record the call, something he should have done right away, and said to Crystal, “Go get Rachel back here. She’ll want to hear this.”
Crystal clearly didn’t want to leave.
“She can’t have gone far,” Leon said. “Go and come right back. You won’t miss much.”
She rose with reluctance and headed out the door.
“Hello?” Leon said into his mic.
Still nothing from the other end. He double-checked to make sure his mute function wasn’t on, and that the line was truly still connected, and everything was as it should be.
The sound started out so soft he wasn’t sure he heard anything, but as it grew louder and louder, he realized he was hearing steps.
“Hello?” a new voice said. A woman this time, younger.
“Hello. My name is Leon. Who am I speaking to?”
“I am Jabala.” She sounded excited. “So good to hear you.”
“Good to hear you, too, Jabala. Where are you?”
“The St. William Boarding School.”
“Where exactly is that?”
“I am sorry. I do not know the name of the town.”
“Well, where is it near?”
“Oh, um, it is a few hours away from Mumbai.”
“Mumbai? Mumbai, India?”
“Yes. India. Where are you? Are you close? Are there others with you?”
He pulled up the list of country codes again. India was 91, not 881. “No, no. I’m in, uh, the US. And not alone.”
“I am so happy to hear that.”
“How many are with you?”
“There are thirty-two of us now.”
He pulled up the protocol sheet for first contact so he wouldn’t miss anything. The first question always made him pause. “Uh, how many of you are, um, sick?”
“Sick? You mean with the flu?”
“Yes.”
“No one. How many of you are sick?”
He knew from experience gained over the last several days that some survivor groups had at least a few people starting to show signs of the disease, so he was relieved to hear Jabala’s people were untouched. Still, she could have been hiding the truth. “We’re okay here, too.” Wanting to probe a bit further, he asked, “You’ve been able to avoid contact with anyone ill?”
“For the most part, yes. But we are safe. We have been vaccinated.”
Leon could feel his chest contract. Vaccinated? Was this St. William Boarding School one of Project Eden’s survival stations?
“Where exactly are you?” he asked.
“What do you mean? I have already told you.”
“Tell me, Jabala, when did you receive the vaccine from the UN?” In his mind, he was already starting to write them off as future Sage Flu victims.
“The UN?” she said. “We did not receive the vaccine from the UN.”
That stopped him for a moment. “Then who gave it to you?”
“My sister’s husband, Sanjay. He stole it for us.”
Leon’s tension eased a bit. This Sanjay had probably gotten his hands on some kind of home remedy, or perhaps some antibiotics from a hospital. Neither would be effective against the virus, but they also wouldn’t be as deadly as Project Eden’s “vaccine.”
“Maybe I should speak to Sanjay,” he said.
“He is not here now.”
“Okay, maybe I can talk to him later, but you need to listen to me very carefully. The people who are claiming to be from the UN are lying. They are not here to help anyone.” Behind him, he heard Crystal enter the room. He glanced back and was surprised to see she was alone. “You need to stay away from them. In fact, you should stay away from Mumbai completely. It’s not safe.”
“We already know this,” Jabala said.
Again, her response caught him off guard. “What do you mean, you already know?”
“Sanjay. He told us the same thing. It is why he and Kusum went to the city. To find out for sure.”
“He and…Kusum are in the city?”
“Yes.”