“Yes,” he said in a low, solemn voice. “The night of my escape, I stole a glass vial filled with a substance they had injected me with during the most recent round of experiments.”
“Do you know what that substance was?”
“Can I see that list of disease antibodies you showed me back in the apartment?”
She retrieved the printouts from the backpack and handed them to him. He leafed through the pages until he found it.
“This is it,” he said, pointing to the name on the list.
“Yersinia pestis? You think Vyrogen intentionally injected you with live plague cultures?”
“I know that they did.”
Julie’s mind started spinning. She had joked about the antibody test results, because she had made the logical assumption that Will had been inoculated with vaccines for each of the bugs on the list. Never in a million years would she have imagined the antibodies were from exposure to the live organisms.
“What you’re saying defies logic. You would be dead if you were injected with every pathogen on that list.”
“You said if I had the antibody for the bug, then that meant I had been exposed to the bug.”
“Exposed, as in vaccinated. That’s what vaccines do — they safely expose your immune system to a specific pathogen so that your immune system can develop antibodies against it. But the pathogen is weakened, dead, or altered in such a way that it is rendered benign. I didn’t mean to suggest that you were exposed to the actual live pathogens on this list.”
“But I was.”
“Are you sure that the vial you stole wasn’t a Yersinia pestis vaccine? The label you read was probably the vaccine label.”
“I know it wasn’t a vaccine because the vial accidentally broke when I was in Prague. I told you that during our IM chat. Remember the two college kids from the youth hostel that I said were sick?”
“Honestly, no I don’t, Will. I’m working off of only two hours sleep and my mind is mush right now. Besides, at the time, I thought you were delusional.”
“I don’t want to go into the whole story, but the vial of Yersinia pestis smashed on the floor and contaminated two kids who were staying in the same room as me. Twelve hours later, they looked like they were on their deathbeds. I don’t know what happened to them though because I had to run when some guys showed up at the hostel looking for me.”
Julie entered a new Google search: “Plague + Prague + youth hostel.” The search list populated, and to her astonishment, she saw several relevant hits. She clicked on one with English subtext.
“Two American tourists died in a Prague area hospital after contracting a virulent strain of bubonic plague. A local woman, who was also exposed, is in critical but stable condition and expected to survive. Czech Health Administration officials released a statement that the infection resulted from exposure to improperly disposed medical waste and that this isolated incident in no way threatens public safety…”
She looked at him, dumbfounded.
“Oh Jesus.” His lower lip began to tremble, and he fought back tears. He had been worried about Rutgers and Frankie, and the news that they had died uncorked a geyser of guilt and pain. “It’s my fault they died.”
She took his hands in hers. “It was an accident, Will. You didn’t know what was in the vial.”
“I should have been more careful.”
“It’s not like you intentionally infected those boys.”
He stood in silence and did not answer her.
“Will, I know you’re upset about those boys, but it doesn’t change the situation we’re in right now. I need you to focus. I need you to help me understand why Vyrogen would inject you with live Yersinia pestis cultures unless they were trying to kill you?”
“Because that’s exactly what they were trying to do.”
“Kill you?”
“No, trying to kill me. I was their experiment. They injected me with pathogens and watched to see what happened.”
“How did you survive? Did they give you antibiotics after they infected you?”
“No.”
“Then why didn’t the plague kill you?”
“Because my body was somehow able to overcome the infection.” He closed his eyes and reminded himself that she had proven her allegiance. It was time to tell her his secret. “Julie, in the time we were together, do you ever remember me getting sick?”
“Sure, don’t you remember the time you puked your brains out the morning after your twenty-first birthday?”
“I’m not talking about that sort of thing. Do you ever remember me getting a stomach bug or a cold or food poisoning or athlete’s foot or anything like that?”
“Actually, now that you mention it, no, I don’t. Even the time that nasty flu had me laid up for days, you didn’t catch it.”
“I know. It was the same when I was a kid too. I won the attendance award every year in school. It was the running joke with all my friends that Will Foster’s mom would never give him a sick day. In fact, when I think back on my childhood, I can’t remember ever being sick. There’s something inside me that’s different. Something unique about my immune system. It’s the reason I have immunity to all the bugs on your list. It’s the why you’ve been looking for.”
“I don’t know what to say,” she said.
“Do you believe me?”
“Of course, it finally all makes sense. The question is… what do we do now?”
“You need to tell me what these are?” he said, pointing to the SEM images of his mysterious lymphocyte.
“I’m an oncology researcher, Will. Not an immunologist.”
“So?”
“This is out of my league. We need someone with subject matter expertise to look at these.”
“Okay, then let’s go see an immunologist. Vienna is a major city. There has to be somebody local we can talk to. Do you know anybody who fits the bill?”
Yeah, Bart Bennett, Julie thought, but did not say. “No, unfortunately, I don’t.”
“All right, then Google it. You’re the search engine guru.”
She sighed as she turned back to her computer. She entered numerous search criteria, but the one that finally yielded results was “Plague + immunity + Vienna + research.”
He leaned in for a closer look at the laptop screen.
“Dr. Roger Johansen, head professor at the Institute of Micro-biology and Genetics, has real potential. His specialty is apparently using genealogy to trace patterns of immunity that develop in populations exposed to pandemics.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with me. How can he help us?”
“I don’t know if he can, but this is the best option I could find who is local. We need an immunologist and I found one. Plus, I can’t imagine that a guy who studies pandemics and genealogies in Vienna doesn’t know volumes about plague. Vienna was practically the Black Death capital of Europe in the Middle Ages.”
“Okay, let’s go see Johansen. I like the fact that he works for a university. At least we don’t have to worry about him being a Vyrogen spy!”
“Yeah,” Julie said, as she wrote down the professor’s office address, phone number, and email address. “You never know who might be on Vyrogen’s payroll.”
“Hello, we’re here to see Doctor Johansen,” Julie said to the middle-aged woman sitting behind an old wooden desk covered with piles of journals, books, and papers.
“You are?” the woman replied, peering over her reading spectacles.