Or . . . no. Maybe the uninfected
would
catch it, but their immune systems, being slower and more primitive, might be able to fashion an antibody to the agent before their likewise sluggish metabolisms ran the disease—assuming that’s what it was—throughout their system. It wasn’t hard to imagine if one likened the possibility to that of the now eradicated Ebola virus of the former African continent, the last of which had finally burned itself out in the bat-filled caves of the Republic of Congo after the global eradication effort. During its heyday, Ebola would often manifest and disappear again almost immediately, simply because it would kill its host—some sad and unlucky human or primate—far too quickly for its own reproductive cycle. Something modeled after that and intended for the Hemophages could be deadly, indeed.
Was that something like what Violet carried in this mysterious white briefcase? Surely not—if so, it didn’t make sense that Nerva would instruct her to detonate the bomb that had been affixed in her clothes since she’d left the meeting place this morning and started on her mission. An explosion was too risky, wasn’t it? After all, detonation had to mean taking a big chance of spreading the virus, or whatever was contained in this case, on the air currents afterward. It would mean every piece of debris left in the explosion’s wake might be contaminated, a potential avenue for mass dissemination of the virus.
Violet glanced down and saw that her forefinger had involuntarily moved to stroke the cool metal. She had risked her life for this briefcase, fought against and beaten down countless soldiers as she took the chance that she might be caught and tortured or killed at any second. She’d given so much and asked for so little in return . . . didn’t she have the right to know what was inside?
She was two floors away from her stop when she reached out and pushed the emergency stop button. The elevator stopped with a jerk, but unless she intentionally pushed it, the alarm wasn’t going to sound. It was just her, and the silence . . .
And the briefcase.
She looked down at it in indecision—
No, that simply wasn’t true.
There wasn’t any indecision about it.
With a senseless glance behind her, Violet knelt and swung the pizza-box-sized briefcase around until it was flat on the floor in front of her knees. Her heart was racing again, this time in anticipation and . . . oh, sure. That thrill, the one she sometimes got when she was about to do something she knew she wasn’t supposed to, like a kid in a toy store getting ready to filch something small but which still had the potential to get him prosecuted. Her personality had always been that of a rebel, a woman who took chances for sometimes nothing more than the fun of doing so.
Another glance, this time at the floor indicator to reassure herself that the elevator hadn’t moved, then Violet slid her thumbs down and broke both of the DNA lock-latches. It was strange that there was no secondary combination lock on the case, but there was no time to think about that now. She drew her breath in and instinctively held it, then quickly lifted the lid.
What she saw inside the case made her breath explode from her throat as she flung herself backward hard enough to slam against the back wall of the elevator.
She stood there for a long moment with her hands splayed at her sides, frozen in place, trying to process what she’d seen. No, it couldn’t be . . . it simply wasn’t possible.
This
was the great and grand weapon?
This
was the object of all destruction for her and her fellow vampires?
A
child?
Violet wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and registered vaguely that her lips were dry enough to crack, then she cautiously approached the briefcase again. No, she hadn’t been imagining it—there he was, a boy child no older than nine years, curled into a cramped, still fetal position in the flat space inside the case.
He was human (nowadays it wasn’t unheard of to come across human-primate mixes, creatures bred to work in hard labor situations), with huge, clear blue eyes that stared up at her beneath a crown of fine, close-cropped light brown hair. While he blinked at the sudden light in the elevator, there was no indication that he had the Hemophage virus inside him—his pupils reacted normally to the light and while his skin was pale, he still had a nice, healthy blush to his cheeks, the kind that fled a Hemophage’s body by the end of the third month of the disease. Violet’s extrasensitive hearing could easily pick up the boy’s heartbeat, and it was normal and steady—
thrum thrum thrum—
as though he had nothing in the world about which he need be concerned. When his gaze focused on her face, he opened his mouth to say something—
And Violet quickly slammed the briefcase shut again.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, trying to comprehend what she’d seen, attempting to subconsciously run through the hows and whys of it. Eventually the self-preservation node in her brain kicked in and reminded her that she’d held up this elevator for quite some time, and there was a damned good chance that pretty soon some kind of auto-alarm would go off. Finally, she stood and picked up the briefcase, then squared her shoulders and pressed the button to get the elevator going again. It started again with barely a hitch, the miracle of modern machinery.
Sometimes a person just had to do whatever was necessary, including some things that he or she really didn’t want to do.
Life was just like that.
By the time the elevator arrived at her floor and the doors slid soundlessly open, Violet had gotten her uncertainty under control and her appearance was once more completely composed. With the briefcase swinging at her side, she strode down the hall with all of her normal self-confidence, her boot heels clicking smartly along the polished tile floor, her head held high, and her face utterly expressionless. At the far end was an unmarked door with a DNA reader set into the wall and covered by a sliding panel that was indiscernible to those who didn’t know it was there. There was no one else in the hallway, so Violet quickly pushed up the panel and pressed the tip of her ring finger against the reader; she didn’t even feel the sting as the surface of her skin was punctured by an air needle and her blood instantly analyzed and identified. In the two seconds it took to process the results, she withdrew her hand so the panel could slide back into its hiding place; when it did, the plain, recessed door slid to the side to admit her.
Nerva turned to watch her enter, as did his several other deadly-looking companions, all Hemophages and probably top-ranking assassins like herself. None of that mattered to Violet. She ignored them and strode directly to the mahogany conference table in the center of the room. She swept aside a handful of file folders with no regard to the ones that scattered on the floor, then placed the case on the table and began removing the gravity leveler that had helped her keep hold of it during the fight to escape from the L.L.D.D.
“Bravo, V!” Nerva’s voice was jovial, his smile wide and bright, but Violet didn’t trust his appearance. He could be so devilishly handsome at times, debonair and impeccably mannered, but the dark good looks that so intrigued many of her female coworkers garnered a zero reaction in Violet. As a result, she also wasn’t subject to the mind games he liked to run on people—she just wasn’t so easily played or swayed by false compliments, a pretty face, and people who feigned support to get what they wanted when the truth was they cared little about what actually happened to anyone but themselves. There might have been times in the far-flung past when her body had made her act differently, but no more. Now she was just here to do a job. That was it. “Bravo!”
“It’s not a weapon,” Violet said flatly. Although the gravity levelers were now disabled, she still had a death grip on the handle.
Nerva’s eyes momentarily widened, then his face lost the air of cheerfulness and he scowled. “What are you talking about?”
“It’s not a weapon,” she repeated. Violet gestured down at the briefcase with her free hand and met his dark, angry gaze without flinching. “It’s a child—a
human
child. I risked my life for
nothing.
”
For a long moment, all Nerva could do was look at her in disbelief. He took a step toward her and actually seemed to stumble, then he used one long, almost delicate finger to steady himself against the side of the conference table. Finally he managed to choke out, “You opened the case?”
Violet’s mouth twisted and her voice dripped with venom. “What’s the difference? It’s not a fucking
weapon.
” She squeezed her eyes briefly shut as she recalled the Chief of Research’s self-satisfied story about what they were using as a decoy. “We were played,” she said derisively. “They probably took the
real
weapon out in the armored convoy!”
At his sides, Nerva’s fists were opening and closing. His companions were wisely remaining silent, unwilling to become involved in what they could sense might be an upcoming war. “I told you
not
to open the case!”
He reached for it, but Violet pulled it out of range and turned away. “I think I had a right to know what I was willing to die for,” she said sarcastically.
Nerva glared at her, then yanked the briefcase out of Violet’s hand before she could react. Sometimes his speed, borne of age and experience, could be nothing short of incredible. He swung it back onto the table’s shiny surface, where the white case stood out in dark relief against the wood so brightly that it could have been backlit by neon. Without hesitating, he clicked open the top. As he stared down, the other Hemophages in the room dredged up their courage and crowded around so they, too, could gaze upon the so-called weapon. Violet could see the out of control curiosity and fascination on each one’s face crumble away as each got within viewing distance. Fascination was soon replaced with bewilderment, then with a much wider repertoire of emotions: anger, uncertainty, disappointment.
Violet stood back a few feet and watched them tensely. From the flat space in the case, the boy’s huge eyes blinked at them. “See?” she finally asked. She shrugged as if to give weight to her declaration. “It’s
nothing.
”
Nerva glanced back at her contemptuously. “Nothing?”
“It’s not a weapon,” Violet said, automatically going on the defensive. “It’s a child.”
But Nerva only shook his head and gave her a thin smile. “It’s both.” Violet and the others regarded him without understanding and he jerked his shaggy head back toward the boy. “It’s a weapon
and
a child. Its blood is swarming with cultured antigens that would kill any one of us on contact.” Nerva’s gaze was flat and deadly, full of self-importance. “If they atomized its tissues into the atmosphere, it would be like . . . insecticide to people like you and me.” He nodded to add emphasis to his words. “It would find us, and it would kill us.
All
of us.” His mouth turned up in hate. “He’s a living petri dish.”
Violet’s gaze snapped to the boy folded into the flat-space interior, trying to reconcile Nerva’s statement with the frightened little boy she’d first encountered in the elevator. Could this be true? No . . . yes. God, she didn’t know. But still, something wasn’t right. The pieces weren’t adding up . . . such as Nerva telling her to blow up the boy, and herself. Would that not have done exactly what he’d just warned them about? It didn’t matter; Nerva would never bother to explain himself to her. “So then . . . what are we going to do with him?” she finally asked.
Nerva lifted one eyebrow, and that simple gesture made it clear he expected her to already know. “Destroy him, of course.” He held out his hand and one of the other Hemophages was already stepping forward to place a laser gun in his palm. A shot to the head would emit a beam that would kill the boy but instantaneously seal the wound—there would be no particle aftereffect, no spreading of the so-called antigen that Nerva believed the boy carried. At least if Nerva really
was
going to kill him, this way would be a lot cleaner and safer.
But he was just a child.
Violet opened her mouth and involuntarily took a step forward. “Nerva, wait.” She swallowed and tried to formulate her words so that they made sense, so he would understand. “You know how antigens work. If an accelerator for H.P.V. is in this child’s blood, then so is the counteranalog for
decelerating
it.”
Nerva held up the gun, then set the strength of the laser. It was all too clear that while he was paying attention to her words, he’d already made up his mind not to give them any credence. “What are you saying, V? A cure?”
She hesitated, then plunged ahead. “Wouldn’t it be better than infecting innocent people?” She gestured at herself and the others. “It’s better than living like this.”
Nerva’s hard expression relaxed a little and he almost smiled at her. “Living like this?
Living
like this?” He closed his eyes for a long second, then reopened them and fixed his glowing gaze on Violet. “Wake up, Violet—the disease and the having of it is what
defines
us. And as far as a cure goes . . .” Now he actually did smile, although it certainly wasn’t a happy one. “Yeah, sure—Garth might fix your body, but do you think he’ll ever be able to cure you of the things you’ve done?”
Violet stared at him and realized she was trembling. How could she make him understand that her past wasn’t the issue here. There was something bigger, more profound at risk. It went beyond her and Nerva and the other Hemophages in this room. It had to do with omnipotent things like destiny, and whether a good chunk of the human race would actually be able to continue existing. How could he be so narrow-minded? “All I’m saying is that this child could provide the choice.”
Nerva ignored her and thumbed the safety lever on the side of the laser gun to
OFF.
The gun responded by humming to life, emitting a high-pitched, almost indiscernible whine that literally made her ears
itch.
“If there’s a choice, V,” he said coldly, “I’ve already made it.”