Outbreak (2 page)

“It’s because they didn’t have
you
,” I say, feeling free with compliments now that we’re one step closer to solving the mystery.

“Damn straight.”

“Can you hack into the compound medical records? I want to know what Bartrizol is used to treat.”

Celdon looks up at me and quirks an eyebrow. “Riles . . . look who you’re asking.”

I roll my eyes. “Just do it so we can get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

Celdon’s fingers start flying, and his eyes narrow the way they do when he’s deep in concentration.

Time seems to slow down as he works, but then his eyes light up again. “I’m in.”

Taking a deep breath, I step around the desk to look over his shoulder. Most of the patients in the admittance log were brought in a few weeks ago, and my heart sinks at the sheer number of them.

Celdon clicks on one of the names — a male patient in his early thirties. His compound ID photo pops up in the left-hand corner of the screen, and I get a chill at how healthy and normal he looks.

There’s a hasty physician’s note typed into the box under his last visit:
Patient was admitted with more of the same . . . high fever, respiratory problems, chills, and vivid hallucinations.

The diagnosis: unknown virus.

Before I can say anything, Celdon clicks out of the window and selects the next patient in the admittance log. The symptoms match, and the diagnosis is the same, too. Desperately, he clicks on several more patients.

Unknown virus. Unknown virus. Unknown virus.

Fingers flying, Celdon performs a search for “unknown virus” and clicks on the first patient listed by date. He was from Health and Rehab himself. 

This man’s file is much more detailed, and it’s clear the puzzled doctors were more diligent in gathering a complete list of symptoms. The virus first presented with a fever, progressing into a wheezy cough that began whenever the patient took the stairs.

Within a day and a half, he was having trouble breathing at all. That’s when he was admitted to the medical ward, where they put him under observation. The physician thought it was bacterial pneumonia. He prescribed antibiotics, but the patient’s condition only deteriorated.

Within twenty-four hours, the hallucinations started. At this point, the physician’s notes start to get more frantic. He called in another doctor to consult. 

They ran tests. They tried other drugs, but nothing seemed to help.

The patient’s lungs filled with fluid, and every breath cost him great effort. They drained his lungs and put him on a ventilator. His heart rate slowed.

Four days after being admitted, patient zero was dead.

Feeling desperate, I nudge Celdon out of the way and pull up the compound news. The current feed is empty, but I scroll down to the week before the last wave of patients was admitted to the medical ward.

All the headlines are just variations of the same message, growing more frantic each day: Unknown virus claims hundreds more lives.

Celdon clicks out of the window and sits back on his stool. He looks just as shocked as I feel.

“It was a virus,” he murmurs. “A damn virus killed all these people.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” I say. “How would a virus like that get in here?”

“It had to come in from the outside. Recon, maybe.”

I shake my head. “Recon operatives are always contained in the postexposure wing for a few days at least. They would have caught it.”

“Maybe ExCon, then.”

“I guess it’s possible . . .”

“What about another compound? Do you think it could have passed to 119 during a supply transfer?”

“Maybe.”

In one swift motion, Celdon highlights all the entries in the log and beams the data to his interface.

“What are you doing?”

“Saving these files so Sawyer can tell us what the hell is going on.”

Why didn’t I think of that?

“There was a drug they were using to treat it,” I say. “Bartrizol.”

“Well, obviously it didn’t work so well.”

I ignore this comment. “Their supplies were totally depleted, but maybe Sawyer knows what it’s for.”

Celdon follows me back to the supply closet, and he’s tall enough to read the label on the bin without standing on his tiptoes. He takes a picture of the label and saves it to his interface for Sawyer.

“It’s pretty bleak, you know?” Celdon mutters. “Whatever this stuff is, they just kept prescribing it even though they knew it wasn’t working.”

My heart aches as I imagine what it would have been like to be stuck here as my friends and former classmates all grew sick and died.

“They probably just did it to keep people calm,” I say.

“It wouldn’t have kept me calm. I’d have locked myself in my compartment and never come out.”

I shiver. Even though the last infected citizen died weeks ago, being in the medical ward after a viral outbreak puts me on edge.

Logically, I know all traces of the virus must be gone. Our Operations workers have been traipsing in and out of here for weeks, but it still makes me uneasy.

“Let’s get out of here,” says Celdon.

I nod and shuffle out of the closet behind him. Our footsteps echo loudly in the pristine white tunnel, and a feeling of hopelessness swamps me when I realize how powerless the compound was in the end.

Just as Death Storm wiped out nearly everyone on the outside, a tiny organism brought down thousands of people in a matter of weeks. The best treatment money can buy was no match for nature. She swept through with a vengeance, killing every human nearby.

We bypass the megalift and take the stairs up to Systems. The freedom to move on our own two feet feels reassuring, plus neither of us wants to get stuck on the lift if it malfunctions.

Celdon leads us down the nicest residential tunnel and heads straight for the corner compartment. The door opens easily, and he shoots me a guilty look.

“I went ahead and overrode all the door codes in the compound,” he mutters. “Just so we can access what we need.”

Any other time, I might chastise him for flaunting his skills, but I can’t unstick my throat. We’re about to enter a dead family’s compartment — the place where they lived and ate and slept.

I bet they never thought that when they left for the medical ward, they wouldn’t be coming back.

As soon as I step inside, I’m blinded by daylight streaming in through the tall windows. The stark white walls magnify its intensity, and it takes several seconds for my eyes to adjust.

This place makes Celdon’s studio look like a closet; you could fit ten compartments the size of his inside the expansive living area. Sunshine bounces off the polished floor, and all the furniture is sleek, modern, and extremely uncomfortable looking.

The windows stretch all the way up to the vaulted ceiling, which tapers down in sharp lines to a loft with a sitting area and several upstairs bedrooms.

On the second level, I can see a tiny staircase winding up toward the ceiling, and I get a pang of envy when I realize that the compartment has its own private entrance to the observation deck.

“Whose compartment was this?” I ask.

“The president’s.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

I throw him an admonishing look, but I guess it doesn’t matter whose compartment we choose. Everyone is dead.

“We should get some sleep,” he says. 

Judging by the sun’s position on the horizon, it’s just past noon, but I’ve been awake for more than thirty hours. 

Suddenly that furniture doesn’t look so uncomfortable. And if everything in the main living area is this nice, I can only imagine how great the beds must feel.

“You think one of us should stay up to keep watch?” I ask.

Celdon snorts. “Watch over
what
? There’s nobody here but us.”

That thought should put me at ease, but it just makes me sad. “Right.” 

We make the odyssey up the narrow staircase, and as soon as I catch sight of the massive bed in the first room, sleep starts calling me.

I should brush my teeth, but I realize belatedly that we left our rucksacks in the medical ward. Without turning on a light or even glancing around the room, I collapse onto the fluffy comforter and fall asleep.

* * *

I awake in total darkness and instantly panic. 

I’m not in my compartment. The bed is much too large and comfortable, and there’s a huge window to my left with a breathtaking view of the starry night sky — a stark contrast to my streaky window overlooking the Underground platform.

It takes several seconds for my fuzzy brain to catch up to reality. 

I’m in 119, sleeping in a dead stranger’s bed. 

I reach out for the lamp on the nightstand. When I touch it, a warm glow illuminates the room, and I realize I didn’t wander into a guest room as I’d thought. There’s a soft-looking sweater draped over a high-backed chair and a cluster of beauty products crowding the bureau. 

Whoever lived in this room could have been my age — maybe the president’s daughter or a favorite niece. And now she’s gone.

I sit up quickly and slide off the bed. Careful not to make a sound, I open the door and tiptoe down the stairs to the living area. A shadow moves in front of the massive window, and I let out a little yelp of surprise.

The figure turns. It’s only Celdon.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

I take several breaths to calm my racing heart. “What are you doing up?” I ask.

“Couldn’t sleep.” His voice sounds very far away, but when he turns to me, it’s the same old Celdon. “Dead guy’s compartment and all.”

“They’re all dead guys’ compartments,” I mutter.

“True. But that doesn’t make it any less creepy.”

I can’t argue with that.

Flipping on my interface, I’m startled to see that it’s almost twenty-three hundred.

“Do you know what time it is?” I ask, feeling a little frantic.

“Yeah.”

“You shouldn’t have let me sleep so long! The supply train will be here soon.”

“I was going to wake you up, but I thought you could use all the sleep you could get.”

“Well . . . we should get moving.”

Celdon clears his throat. “Yeah, we should.”

The silence that stretches between us is heavy with unspoken fears. Neither of us wants to acknowledge that the supply train might not come. We don’t have time to dwell on that possibility.

Taking one more look around the luxurious open floor plan, I promise myself that I won’t have to spend another night in a dead man’s compartment. And I’m
certainly
not going to be stuck here for the rest of my life.

two

Celdon

I’ve always tried to avoid silence. Silence feels like death — and there’s plenty of death here to go around.

I never quite realized what a long descent it is from Systems to the lower levels. It seems a million times longer in the dark with the strap of my bag cutting into my shoulder and nothing to distract me other than the sound of Harper’s breathing. 

It’s kind of amazing to think we have an entire compound to ourselves, but I’ve never wanted to leave a place as much as I do now.

We splash through yet
another
puddle of standing water on the middle landing, and Harper quickens her pace. She reaches the next level first and throws her weight against the metal door, bathing the stairwell in the harsh glow of the emergency lights emanating from the Recon tunnel. 

Seeing her standing there ankle-deep in cloudy water with her jacket rolled up to the elbows, I realize how much stronger she is than me. Bid Day didn’t destroy her. If anything, her time in Recon has made her tougher and more determined.

The telltale rumble of the approaching train echoes down the tunnel, and relief shoots through my body like a hit of surge. We won’t be stuck here forever.

“Come on!” calls Harper, throwing the door open wider.

I take the last few stairs two at a time and join her out in the tunnel. 

The Recon level in 119 is even dingier than it is back home. The cinderblock walls are a drab institutional gray, the dirty tile is broken in several places, and the metal compartment doors we pass have obscene messages carved into the chipped paint.

The screech of brakes is so loud that it hurts my ears, and my heart speeds up at the prospect of escaping this hellhole. 

As we near the “T” in the tunnel that leads to the Underground, I hear the train doors roll open and the slap of workers’ boots on the platform.

Harper’s breathing has picked up, and her knuckles are white against the wall as she waits for the workers to vacate the premises.

Somebody barks orders that are indistinguishable over the rumble of activity. Dollies roll down the train, and the workers bang around some more, unloading the empty crates. Harper peeks around the corner and then whips around so fast that we nearly bang heads.

“Hey! What the —”

“Move! Move! Move!” she hisses.

“Why?”

“They’re coming down here!”

I freeze. Something isn’t right. The Operations workers are supposed to be heading up to Health and Rehab — not slumming down in Recon. But I force my legs to move and follow Harper down the dark tunnel at a run.

When we reach a row of compartments, she stops and tries the first door. It doesn’t budge. 

She jiggles the handle again and turns to me with a wild look in her eyes. “I thought you unlocked all the doors remotely!”

My brain is struggling to connect the dots, but I finally realize what the problem is. “The remote unlock command must have timed out.”

She growls in frustration and tries another. I open my mouth to tell her it’s futile, but then she turns and sprints down the tunnel away from the Underground. 

I follow at a brisk limp. My legs feel heavy and sore after traipsing through the compound yesterday, and I’m definitely not as fit as she is.

We wind through the maze of compartments until we reach a set of double doors. A tarnished placard over the entrance reads “training center.”