I stiffened. Did I look like a thief?
“I didn’t mean — There are eighteen strains of Ferae in there.” He pointed at the mini fridge. “You don’t want to infect yourself — that’s all I meant.”
“Oh.” No, I definitely did not want to infect myself. In fact, I was going to sit down and keep my hands in my lap until Dr. Solis showed up. Maybe I’d even keep my breathing to a minimum. I did a slow turn in place, trying to decide what spot looked the least germy. Would it be rude to move the doctor’s paperwork? I eyed the stack of files on the chair next to me. A corner of a photo stuck out from the pile. I stared at it. Moving the stack — questionable. Riffling through it — definitely rude. And yet I reached for the photo, gently pulled it free of the pile … and then nearly swallowed a lung.
I flipped the photo over before the image gave me brain damage, but of course, within a second I had to take another peek. The picture was of a person’s open mouth with a scattering of oozing sores where teeth should have been. In some of the gaps, new teeth were growing in — triangular, serrated, and definitely not human.
My conscience pinged but I couldn’t stop myself; I sifted through the stack and found a manila folder labeled “Stage Two: Physical Mutation.” Inside were more photos of human body parts gone very, very wrong. Two curling yellow horns that poked through someone’s dark hair. A child’s fingers that ended in claws. A man’s forearm sprouting patches of spotted fur.
“Not an attractive bunch, are they?” asked a voice behind me.
I spun as a man with graying hair closed the office door — Dr. Solis, judging by his white lab coat. He was so willowy that a child could have pushed him over. He smiled. “I don’t suppose they show you pictures like that in your science classes.”
“No, never.” I slid the photos back into the folder, despite feeling a pressing need to flip through the rest of the pile. Actually, what I really wanted was to swipe a few and smuggle them into the West to show Anna. I needed someone to shriek with.
“I’m Vincent Solis,” he said. “And you are Delaney. It’s good to finally meet you, even if the circumstances aren’t the best.” He saw my surprise and added, “Everson says you’re looking for Mack.”
Yes, I was, but the mutated body parts had hijacked my thoughts. “Can you cure them?” I pointed to the file with the photos.
“No.” Sighing, he settled into the chair behind the desk. “I can’t even develop an effective vaccine until I have samples of all the different strains. So far the most I’ve come up with is an inhibitor that slows the rate of the mutation. It’s not much, but they’re clamoring for it over there.” He waved airily toward what I guessed was the East. “Every month, your father takes a crate of it to a group of infected people living in an old quarantine compound. They tell him about any changes they’ve noticed or if they’re experiencing side effects. It’s not an ideal way to conduct research, but until the law changes, I don’t dare go myself.”
“Why not?” It was okay for my father to risk infection and arrest, but not him?
“Titan pays for all of this” — he swept a shaky hand at the room and the corridor beyond — “in the hopes that I’ll find a way to immunize the line guards. They don’t care about those who are already infected. The CEO, Ilsa Prejean, has made it quite clear that if I ever cross the river to collect data, she’ll cut my funding. You see, the corporation that gets paid to enforce the quarantine can’t afford to employ a quarantine breaker. That’s why I’m so grateful to your father. I couldn’t have gotten this far without him.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
“Mack cut through camp last night. Stopped by just long enough to tell me that biohaz agents were right behind him. They weren’t. Not that I saw anyway.” Dr. Solis began patting down his lab coat until he found a blue inhaler in a pocket.
“Where did he go?”
Dr. Solis shook the inhaler, frowned, and tossed it aside. “To Moline, the quarantine compound I mentioned. Mack has friends there.”
My mouth went dry. He’d gone back into the Feral Zone where mutants with claws and horns went around mauling people? Inhibitor or not, that sounded suicidal. “What if one of them bites him?”
“I don’t believe any have progressed to stage three of the disease.”
“What?”
“I’m sorry. You’re worried about your father and I’m talking like a virologist.”
“No, it’s okay. I want to know.”
With a nod, Dr. Solis leaned forward, bracing his forearms on the desk. “There are three stages to Ferae. The first presents with a high fever within one to ten hours after infection. Once the virus is established, the fever ends and the patient regains his faculties. After that, the virus begins a slow takeover of the body and the patient starts to manifest physical signs of infection.” He gestured toward the file of photographs. “Anatomical deformities. Stage two can last anywhere from weeks to years. It all depends on the patient’s health, genetics, access to antiviral medication…. Many factors.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes. “The third and final stage of Ferae is insanity. The virus invades the brain, at which point the patient becomes animalistic and highly aggressive.”
“Oh.” And I’d thought his photos were gruesome. What was playing in my mind now, however, combined those images with sounds and actions to terrifying effect.
“Incubation, mutation, psychosis — those are the stages.” Dr. Solis rose and moved unsteadily toward the bookcase. “We used to compare Ferae to rabies. Now we know the better model is syphilis, which has a symptomatic stage that can last decades before dementia finally sets in.”
After a moment of scrounging through boxes on the shelves, he found an inhaler and gave it a dreamy smile. “Anyway, Mack tells me that in the past year, no one in Moline has progressed to the final stage. I’d like to think it’s because of the inhibitor he’s been taking them, but who knows?” Squeezing the inhaler, the doctor sucked in the Lull and, surprisingly, he seemed to straighten up. Guess the drug didn’t work very well on him. “You needn’t worry, Delaney. Your father will lie low for a while and then come back to check that the coast is clear, which it is.”
“It isn’t,” I said, feeling a throb in my temples. “The biohazard agents are after him. They recorded him breaking quarantine.”
Dr. Solis’s gaze sharpened despite the Lull in his system.
“Have you seen the recording?” he asked. “You know for a fact that it exists?”
I nodded. “Where is Moline?” What I really wanted to know was just how far my father had ventured into the Feral Zone. Stuffing the cap into my back pocket, I took out my dad’s map and spread it across the desk. “Show me?”
Why was I bothering with this? Spurling’s orders were to come right back if I couldn’t find my dad. Still, I watched as Dr. Solis pointed to a spot on the map — a city, which had been circled in dark ink.
“It’s directly across the river,” he said. “Just off the northeastern tip of the island. There used to be a bridge there, back in the day, but not now.”
I touched the tiny line that was the last and only bridge across the Mississippi. Like the bridge that I’d crossed to get from the west bank onto Arsenal, the last bridge to the Feral Zone was on the south end of the island. “How big is Arsenal?”
“A thousand acres.”
“I mean from end to end.”
“A little over three miles.” He sank into the chair behind his desk. “Are they threatening execution?”
“Yes,” I said softly.
The doctor dragged his hand down his face. “Mack knew that it might come to this — that something could happen, making it impossible for him to return west.”