Summer gave him the notebook. “Then it’s a new recipe. The deal still stands. One hour a day. That’s the best I can do.”
“I accept. We now have a binding agreement,” Lipton said, opening the notebook and studying the first few pages. “Hmmm. Interesting.”
“Well?”
Lipton held up an index finger, but didn’t respond as he flipped through a few more pages, his eyes taking in the notes. Several minutes went by before he spoke again. “Let me say this: Your version of me was quite thorough.”
“Yeah, tell us something we don’t know,” Krista said.
“I’m afraid that would take the rest of my days.”
“Are you gonna help us or not?” Krista snapped.
“Patience is the path to enlightenment,” Lipton said, licking the tip of his finger and turning another page. A few more minutes ticked by before he finished reading and closed the journal.
“What does it mean?” Summer asked, taking the notebook from him.
“His notes make mention of additional calculations. Might I see them?”
“How do you know our version of you was a man?” Krista said. “I never said that.”
“Of course he was. Don’t be silly.”
“What a chauvinist prick,” Krista mumbled, rolling her eyes.
“The calculations?” Lipton asked Summer again.
“They’re in his lab.”
“I suggest you take me there. Posthaste. This truly cannot wait another minute.”
CHAPTER 27
Summer stood shoulder to shoulder with the taller Lipton as the scientist stepped to the worktable in Morse’s lab, humming a soft tune. Summer couldn’t place the melody, but it sounded familiar, though she didn’t know how or why.
Lipton’s hand went to the transmitter sitting on the far end of the surface, running the tip of his finger across its metal case, almost as if it gave him sexual gratification.
So far, Krista hadn’t restrained Lipton, but her chief watchdog, Wicks, was not far behind, his hands on his rifle and eyes on the prisoner.
Lipton moved his hand to the box of spare parts sitting adjacent to the radio, dipping his fingers into the disarray. He picked up a couple of circuit boards, inspecting each for a moment, before putting them back in the same location.
“The equations are over here,” Summer said, pointing to the leftmost grease board in the room. “You said it was urgent, so let’s stop wasting time.”
Lipton followed Summer to the first board, his humming never taking a second off. Not until he decided to speak. “Well. Well. Well. It appears I need to revise my earlier assessment.”
“About what?”
“Your version of me being thorough.” Lipton picked up a magic marker and an eraser, wiping away one of the equations on the board and replacing it with a new one. “He needed to double-check his math. Sloppy is all I can say. And a bit hasty with his assumptions.”
“Morse was usually very careful.”
“Obviously not. I trust you did not put all your faith in his conclusions.”
“Actually, we did. He was our go-to guy—for everything.”
Lipton’s face pinched, his cheeks turning a red color. “And this facility remains?”
Summer held up her hands. “Look around. What do you think?”
“I suppose a modicum of luck was to be expected. Even a blind squirrel—” Lipton said, stopping his sentence short.
Summer looked at Krista and she looked back, both of them shooting each other a what the hell look.
Lipton moved to the right, reviewing the next board. This time he didn’t change anything after pondering the handwritten presentation.
The man continued on, moving from board to board, changing a number here, an equation there, circling some figures and underlining others.
When Lipton arrived at the last board—the one with the equations written in red—he stopped his perpetual hum and took a step back before crossing his arms over his chest. He froze in that stance, his lips fluttering without any sound.
After an extended silence, Lipton put his hand out to Summer. “Journal, please.”
Summer gave it to him.
Lipton opened it, zipping past a dozen pages until he landed on one near the middle. His head tilted to the left, but his eyes remained fixed on the notes when he said, “That’s what I thought.”
“What?”
“Time to start packing.”
“Excuse me?”
He pointed to the number thirty-five circled on the board in red, then at the three letters written after it. “Haven’t you ever wondered what the E.O.D. represents?”
“Of course I do. That’s why you’re here.”
“It means End of Days, of which, you have 35 remaining,” he said, pausing with an intense look on his face. He used the eraser and pen again, this time changing the number thirty-five. “Correction, 29 days.”
Summer took a few moments to process the words he’d just uttered, not wanting to accept the man’s explanation. Perhaps she heard him wrong. “When you say End of Days, do you mean, like, the End of Days, as in the Bible?”
“More or less.”
“For the planet?”
“For this complex. As I mentioned before, time to start packing.”
Krista stepped forward, breaking her silence with a sharp tongue. “Explain what you mean.”
Lipton walked to the worktable and sat down in the chair before putting the notebook on the surface. “It’s all about the wastewater experiments he was running.”
“Wastewater?” Summer asked.
“Yes, as in sewage. You do have a reclamation system in use, correct?”
“I think so,” Summer answered.
“It’s on Sublevel 8,” Krista added.
Summer cleared her throat and sent daggers with her eyes at Krista, wishing her second-in-command hadn’t told him that fact.
She turned her attention to Lipton, praying he didn’t catch onto where they were or what kind of facility they were in. His face didn’t give any indication he’d gleaned any information from her comment, though he was an odd duck anyway, so there was no way to know for sure.
Summer waved her hands at several of the grease boards in the room, hoping to keep his attention on something else. “What does wastewater have to do with any of this?”
Lipton opened the notebook to page three and pointed at the diagram in the middle. It was one of five charts on the page. “This tells the story of what he discovered.”
“Go on.”
“I’m sure you remember the days when the evening news was filled with reports about physicians over-prescribing antibiotics.”
“Sure,” Krista said. “Something about the diseases becoming immune.”
“Actually, not the disease. The microbes. When they have time to familiarize themselves with an abundance of antibiotics, both the surrounding bacteria and their own cellular structure begin to share bits and pieces with each other about the DNA involved in the antibiotics. Specifically, the resistances they encounter.”
“Are you saying they learn from each other?” Summer asked.
“In a sense, yes,” Lipton answered. “But it doesn’t end there. That prolonged exposure allows the microbes to develop a resistance over time, rendering the antibiotics ineffective. Eventually, the drugs administered to defeat the microbes become a food source, giving them energy to grow and evolve, becoming pathogenic. And when I say that, I mean evolve into a super pathogen. One without any method of treatment.”
Summer hesitated for a bit, letting the words soak in, trying to link the pieces together from what the man had said. “Okay, I get that, but why was Morse running experiments on our sewage?”
“As most microbiologists will tell you, there are concentrated amounts of antibiotics in our soils, our water, and our sewage, especially around hospitals, farms, and anywhere else physicians hand out antibiotics like pamphlets at a political rally.”