Duality (The Hitchhiker Strain) (16 page)

Chapter 21 - Chelsea

Sleep didn
’t come easily as my thoughts flew all over the place and I was forced to resort to counting sheep and other silly mental techniques to keep my darkest memories from seeping into conscious thought. But once I finally managed to empty my mind and finally fall asleep I fall hard, drifting off into a deep and dreamless rest.

First thing the next morning, I'm moved from my cell and into a tiny bedroom. The door has a keypad lock on it and no windows, but as far as I can tell, there is al
so no camera, so I welcome it without complaint. There is small set of drawers filled with a few different options for jeans and t-shirts, and though it takes me a few tries to find something that fits, it's so nice to have options. I settle on yoga pants and a tank top, reveling in the memory of how comfortable clothing can be.

Really, I'm feeling good about absolutely everything this morning. Even as they put me through another regimen of tests, I can't help but smile and play along with all of their requ
ests. I feel good and I don't care who knows it.

"I've got a surprise for you," Zack says once the two of us have finished a late breakfast in a small corner cubicle away from gawking scientists. I
’m not the only one who is acting unreasonably chipper this morning. Apparently another one of his friends made it back last night, this one with a little girl in tow. She’s not in good shape by any stretch of the imagination, but she’s alive. By the time I woke up this morning, she was already undergoing treatment.

"Oh?" I used to like surprises, but I'm wary. I'll be perfectly content if I never have to face another surprise ever again.

"Doctor Nickleby was telling me you still have some questions." Nodding slowly, I raise my eyebrows. Of course I have questions. My interview yesterday barely scratched the surface of everything I still need to know. "Well I spent a lot of time in the medical wing during my first month here. Mostly running errands and stuff like that, but I made some friends." He pauses, but I'm still waiting for him to get to the part where this is a surprise for me. "Doctor Turmen, this guy who used to work at the CDC, was always really good about taking time to explain things to me. So I asked him if he wouldn't mind putting together something for you. Like a Veritas 101 type thing."

As far as surprises go, this falls somewhere between winning five dollars on a scratch ti
cket and getting breakfast in bed—not awe inspiring, but incredibly thoughtful. I smile at Zack and his eyes light up. I don’t know why he’s taken it upon himself to try and make things easier for me, but I’m so grateful.

“
I managed to get you about an hour off from everything they have planned for you today,” he continues, “so you probably won’t get all of the answers you’re looking for, but it’s a start.”

“
No! It’s great! Really… This is perfect. Thank you. When do you we go?”

“
They want to run you through a quick fitness test after we’re done eating. Then it’s more blood work. Then we go.”

Doctor Turmen flicks a small switch on the side of the monitor and the display comes to life. The room we're in is cramped and dark, but the entire far wall is covere
d in massive screens, so it has been easy enough to follow along so far.

"This is one of our patients from the last month, the third to be injected with the current version of Veritas." The screen in front of me shows two separate images, one listing off
big medical-sounding words followed by percentages, the other some sort of internal brain scan of what I assume is a man. "When we found him, he was infected with the secondary strain of R-11. Like you. We kept him for observation for three days before injecting him with the Veritas serum. Again, the same version that you were given."

I nod and do my best to commit everything I
’m seeing to memory.

"Here you can see him before his first dose. All of his levels and brain activity were showing as standard fo
r someone who has been infected for approximately two months."

"You can tell that from
looking at him?" I ask, impressed.

"From a sample of his blood that we took upon arrival."

“Wow. So then you lock him up and observe him for a few days before..." I stop talking, realizing that, if I’m remembering it properly, what I’m being told already deviates from what happened to me. "I wasn't here for long before I was given the cure, was I?” Maybe a few hours. But I was pretty out of it, so maybe I blacked out or something."

"No, you're right. There was some debate with you," the doctor explains. "We were all in agreement that you wouldn't survive our usual three-day testing period. The question was which infection we should try to manage first
—the one in your arm or the one in your blood."

"Why did you, or whoever it was, decide to give me Veritas before antibiotics?" I can't help but wonder if the experience might have been a little less awful if I'd been allowed to heal a little bit first.

"Because we hadn't tried it before. Due to the enhanced immune system of the second generation infected, we'd never encountered any who were suffering from any illness or disease. Besides the obvious. There were some who'd survived severe physical trauma, most likely injuries from fights, but we'd never seen anything the likes of what you were experiencing—sepsis, severe inflammation of the infected area. It was clear to everyone that your immune system wasn’t equipped to handle how sick you’d become.

“
While we generally have a very specific timeline for our tests and what we're willing to try, we had to acknowledge that we might not get a chance like this again. Thankfully, the risk paid off."

"So that's why I'm
—"

"It's the best guess we have so far, yes. We suspect that, because
you were already significantly weakened that the cocktail of drugs we gave you, it was able to better penetrate the infected cells in your body and alter your brain chemistry, allowing for your remarkably quick recovering."

I'm not sure what to make of th
is new information, so I turn back to the screen in front of me. I wish I had thought to ask for something to take notes with so that I could go back over all of this later. "Okay, so patient X over here. Full-on infection."

"Right." He turns back to the s
creen. "You can see the synapses in his brain during infection. His thought patterns were significantly reduced..."

"This is your brain on zombie," Zack jokes. Immediately I screw my face up into the most shocked and appalled expression I can manage
—eyes wide, mouth open, and a gaze that says ‘I'll never forgive you.’ Even with the monitors for light, I can see when Zack's expression shifts to horror. "Shit! I didn't mean..."

A smile cracks on to my face, and within seconds, I'm laughing, more at his reacti
on than anything. "Don't worry so much. After everything I've seen, it'll take more than that to insult my delicate zombie sensibilities."

With a smile, Zack relaxes, and the two of us turn back to the doctor, who is watching us
both with exasperation plain on his features.

The doctor drones on for the next half hour, explaining every single step of the process in more detail than I think I'm ready for. If Zack were to pull out a pop quiz after we leave here, I know I'd have no
chance of passing it. Science was never my strong suit, and with everything else I've been trying to process, almost nothing is staying put in my brain.

By the time we reach the part of the demonstration where the patient
’s higher brain function begins to return, my jaw is slack. This man hasn’t recovered nearly the amount of higher function that I have. I can make out the increased brain activity in his frontal and temporal lobes. Whatever that means.

"That's amazing!" And it really is. Right before my ey
es, I can see the infection leaving this man’s body until he's completely cured. The corresponding brain scan still shows reduced connections or synapses or whatever, but even I can tell that his mind is different than it was when he was first brought in.

It's not that I didn't believe in the cure before this, but seeing it happen right in front of my eyes is absolutely incredible.

"We like to think so. We still have a ways to go, but having you here with us, talking and interacting like this, has gone a long way toward renewing our faith in what it is we're doing here.”

"So what happens next?" I ask.

"What do you mean?"

"This is going to change everything. You can save so many lives! Now that you have a working cure, how do you go about rounding up the inf
ected and putting them through the treatment process?"

The doctor furrows his brow as though I'm speaking another language. "We don't."

"I mean, like, what's the next phase? How do you implement the cure on a larger scale?"

"Well, of course that is our ult
imate goal, but we still have a long way to go before that happens."

Now I don't understand. I've seen the evidence of what they can do. What's the holdup? These people have the ability to help countless people and bring them back from the internal hell th
ey’ve been subjected to for the past eight months. I thought they’ve already been out there trying to spread the word as quickly and as far as they can.

I can
’t help but notice that Zack is silently hovering behind me. There has to be some explanation that I’m not seeing.

“
Okay… So what actually happens next? What do you still need to do?”

The doctor
’s excited demeanor returns, but I can’t help but feel like he’s brushing away my concerns. “We’ve already implemented the data we received from you into our formulas. We’re developing a new version of Veritas that should hone in on some of the problem areas we’ve been having.” When I still don’t look impressed, he adds, “Production on the next batch could begin as early as tonight!”

“
And then…”

“
And then we start testing. We’ll use a combination of previously cured and recently procured patients and monitor both sets of results. From there, we adapt again and repeat. A third group will be working from our current theories on you, but we do have to be prepared to accept that you could be an anomaly. Either way, we’re making strides every day.”

None of this information is remotely reassuring. Not only does it sound like they could still be months away from sharing their results, but they
’re going to what… Try and repeat their success with me by nearly killing their patients and hoping for the best?

The doctor tries for a few more minutes to talk over the growing discomfort in the room. I
’m grateful when it’s finally time to go. I feel like a disillusioned child who has just learned that her parents are only human.

I don
’t even have to voice my fears before Zack is trying to reassure me. "They obviously know what they're doing," Zack says. "I'm sure they have big plans to help a lot of people. They just need to make sure they're going about things the right way so no one else gets hurt."

"And how long will that take? Weeks? Months? Back before all of this, it would take drug companies years to get to the point where they were able to give anything to the general public.
"

"They'll get there though. It hasn't been that long since they first found a way to cure the infected and not even a week since your recovery. They'll get all of this figured out before you know it."

"And what about all of the people who die between now and then? Even if they can't get all the way back to the people they were right away, they're still better off in a cell than wandering aimlessly, killing and infecting more people. Every day they wait, the less people they will be to help later. It’s going to get worse."

“
They only have so many people they can send to do that kind of work, only so much space. Chelsea, I promise you that no one here ever stops working toward a cure. I’ve seen how hard they work. I know how important this is to them. To everyone.”

From there, we walk in silence. I want to believe him, and I can tell how much he believes in these people. I do too. They
’ve helped me so much, and I would be incredibly selfish to be anything less than eternally grateful for everything they’ve done. And yet, it still doesn’t feel like enough.

Even if I
’m an anomaly, I know enough about science to know that I can’t be unique. Not really. If they were to give the newest serum to enough people, there would have to be others like me eventually. Every single one of those lives is worth saving.

By the time we reach the wing where Doctor Nickleby is waiting for me, I've decided to sleep on it. Bringing up these same arguments with different people isn't going to get me anywhere
—not that I even know where it is that I'm trying to go. For now, all I can do is provide them with as much information as I can and do my best to help them help the others.

I'd like to think that I could offer some valuable insight into how the infected th
ink. Maybe if I can get in to see some of the others who have been given the cure, I can get a sense of what they might need in order to progress further. If it's chemical or something along those lines, I know I'll be completely useless. I never got higher than a B in science. But if it's psychological, I might be able to offer valuable insight. If nothing else, I have a unique perspective that I can bring to the table. The question is whether or not anyone will actually listen to what I have to say.