46
Musílkova 27, Prague, Czech Republic
November 30
When Eva arrived back in the room, Rhodri was already there. She shut the door behind her, eyed him carefully.
“I should have made sure you were dead,” she told him, cold and dispassionate.
He didn’t reply, just smirked at her.
“Still in my head,” she sighed. “But I guess that’s better than the alternative.”
She checked the incubator, and pulled the finished container out, the lid fastened tight. She pushed it into her pocket, hit the button to create another batch, but the machine flashed a warning: “Please insert serum refill tube”. She checked inside, and sure enough, it was empty. She looked back at her mother, heard a soft lullaby, squeezed the container in her pocket.
“I’ll be right back, mama,” she whispered, and opened the door a crack.
Outside, another guard stood with his back to her, watching the hallway carefully. He turned his head slightly at the door opening, then looked back ahead.
“Go back inside,” he told her.
“I need some needles,” she said, “so I can help my mother.”
He didn’t move a muscle.
“Stay inside,” he repeated sternly. “Until I say otherwise.”
Eva stepped into the hall, tense and angry, looked left and right, trying to find a medical station somewhere. The guard turned to her, grabbed her by the arm, tried to push her back into the room.
“I said stay inside!” he growled. She fought back, gripping the door frame. The guard was clearly not prepared for such an occasion, let go over her arm, and planted his palm on her face, pushing her. She ducked away from the movement, slipped outside, and he stumbled in.
She was halfway down the hall when she was caught again, dragged back off-balance, and slammed against the wall.
“Don’t mess with me, girlie,” he said, angrily. “Just get in the room and shut up.”
She kneed him in the groin, and he fell over at once.
“Don’t mess with me,” she seethed, stepping over him and checking down the hall. But then she heard it: the clear click of a gun ready to shoot. She looked over her shoulder, saw the guard there, carefully aiming at her, eyes narrow with pain.
“That’s it!” he said, vein bulging in his forehead. “On your knees!”
Eva’s face was blank with fear. She’d overstepped, and now this… she was halfway to complying when she heard angry shouts from behind, and Dmitri rushed in, snatching the gun away from the guard and slamming him against the wall.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he yelled into the guard’s face. “I told you to watch her, not shoot her!”
“She was trying to leave the—”
“I don’t care what she was doing! There’s no excuse for this!”
“But—”
Dmitri ripped the man’s mask off his face, threw it to the ground. He grabbed him on the collar, shoved him towards Eva, onto the floor.
“Get out of my sight. You’re fired. If I see you again, I’ll have you shot. By someone competent.”
The guard scrambled away, rushing down the hall, through a door and out of sight. Dmitri helped Eva to her feet, turned meekly to the others who’d come with him.
“Sorry about that, Mr Carey,” he said apologetically. “Hard to find good help round here.”
The masked man — whom Eva thought looked horribly like the Healers she’d heard about all these years — nodded. Richard looked rattled, kept checking Eva, making sure she was okay.
“It’s hard to find good help pretty much everywhere,” Carey agreed. “Now if you don’t mind…”
He held out a small device with a needle at its point, started towards Eva. She backed up, hitting the wall.
“What’s going on?” she gasped.
Richard put a hand on Carey’s arm, held him back.
“I’m sorry, Mr Carey, I thought I made it clear I was seeking asylum for my wife and step-daughter.”
Eva’s head swam suddenly, and she slid to the ground, looking from Richard to Carey to Dmitri, trying to see… trying to make sense of it. It was impossible to read Carey, but by the change in his stance, he was preparing to be tough.
“You made it perfectly clear, Mr Daniels, but I’m afraid regulations require me to check their health status before I can process them, even as refugees. They can’t be admitted, even to Brighton, if they’re actively infected.”
“Listen, I have a personal facility outside London I can sequester them in if that—”
“I’m afraid not, sir. It would be nearly impossible under normal circumstances, but given the particulars of the trial you’ll be subject to, we wouldn’t stand a chance of sneaking something like that under the rug. No chance at all. We can only mask scrutiny so far.”
Eva had her head in her hands, trembling.
“You’re married?” she said, staring at the floor. “And nobody thought to tell me?”
Carey looked to Richard, cocked his head.
“Mr Daniels…?” he asked.
Richard waved it off, a hint of a politic smile, but drowning in concern.
“She’s been gone for many years. Travel. I don’t think she got the wedding announcement.”
Eva glared at Richard, cold. Dmitri, behind Carey, gave her a very slow shake of the head. She frowned briefly, and he returned it with a wordless urgent appeal.
“If she’s been travelling, I’ve double the reason to check her blood,” Carey said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’ve a schedule to keep.”
Eva looked to Richard, to Dmitri, desperate for advice, guidance. They both nodded to her solemnly.
“Fine,” she sighed, rolling up her sleeve and letting him draw the blood. When he was done, she slid her arm close to herself, backed against the wall, waited. Carey stared at his device intently, seemingly oblivious to the rest of the tension in the cramped hallway.
He looked up, to Eva, then settled on Richard.
“She’s infected,” he said, double-checking the results. “I’m afraid I can’t take her with us.”
“You’ll leave me here alone? What about my mother! She’d never agree to that if she were—”
“If she were what?” Carey asked, checking between Richard and Dmitri. “Is she infected as well?”
“Mr Carey, if you could just…” Richard began, but he was cut off by Carey swinging a pair of handcuffs up.
“I’m sorry, Mr Daniels. We’ve no more time for these games. You’ve got to come with me.”
He pushed Richard against the wall, pulled one arm back, then the other. And then a gun pointed carefully at the side of his head; he almost didn’t see it through the goggles.
“Mr Carey,” Richard said darkly. “I’m afraid this won’t work out after all.”
Dmitri motioned with his gun, and Carey obediently backed away from the rest of them, hands in the air, cuffs hanging from his fingers. Eva got to her feet behind Dmitri. Richard smiled weakly.
“And now we will have to reconsider our plan of action,” he said without a hint of frustration. “If you’ll come with me, then.”
Dmitri kept the gun on the prisoner, and the three men walked down the hall and out of sight, leaving Eva alone again, only Rhodri keeping her company. He heard him chuckle quietly. She scowled at him.
She went back into the room and found her mother crying softly, shaking her head side to side as if trying to wake up. Tears streamed down her face, and her arms tensed violently; if she’d been free, she might have done something horrible with her clawing hands. Eva brushed her hair gently, leaned in and kissed her on the forehead.
“Just another minute, mama. I promise,” she said, then snuck back into the hall. Down, away from Richard’s room, she found a small walk-in-closet filled with shelves and drawers and a large needle dispenser in the back. She ducked in, took a syringe from the counter and clipped on a head. She pulled the container from her pocket, undid the lid, and gently placed the needle into the serum.
Just then, she heard loud footsteps in the hall, shouting. It startled her, and she dropped the container… she tried to catch it before it hit the ground, but it bounced off the countertop and crashed on the floor, upside-down. The cure flowed quickly onto the tile.
She bit back a curse as she heard the quick pause of footsteps outside.
“Hey, should this be open?” called a gruff voice, a guard, in Russian.
Eva reached down, snatched the fallen container off the ground, and quickly slid back to the side of the door, the unused needle in her hands as her only weapon. She stayed there in the dark, the door open a crack, waiting.
She heard the sound of heavy boots stepping into the room, and the door swung wider. Breathing, panting almost, and the shadow on the wall told her he was alone. She held the needle backhand, evened her breathing. She waited for him to move.
But instead, he ducked back out, closing the door behind him, and she stood in the darkness.
“All clear!” he called out, and took off down the hall.
Eva released her breath, felt shaky. She reached over, turned on the lights, and checked the spilled antivirus. The container was empty, and what was left on the floor was so dispersed, it was unusable. Eva stood up, ran her hands through her hair, trying to think. She felt the warm breath of Rhodri on her neck, but ignored it.
She started rushing through drawers, cupboards, anything, until she found a tray labelled “Incubator Refills”. It was empty. She slammed it back into place, swearing.
“If I can’t make any more…” she whispered to herself.
It came to her suddenly: the refills at her mother’s apartment! She smiled broadly, and turned, hearing Rhodri clapping at her, sarcastic applause. He didn’t speak, but he was getting clearer in her mind. She grimaced.
“I need to slow it down,” she muttered.
She rummaged again, quickly coming to a small refrigerated compartment labelled “Cocktails”. She threw it open, and stumbled back at what she saw: there was only one vial of cocktail left. She darted eyes to Rhodri, then to the door, and she grabbed it out of the fridge, another needle, and rushed back down the hall.
Her mother was starting to scream again, convulsing angrily. Eva filled the needle, pushed it into her mother’s IV, then paused.
“I need you to stay calm until we get home, all right, mama?”
There was no response. Eva inhaled slowly, then injected the last of the cocktail. She rested her head on the panicked chest, hearing the heartbeat, hearing it slow, becoming calmer, and then she carefully undid the restraints, pulled her mother out of bed, and with the incubator in one hand, stumbled her way home.
Rhodri trailed behind, nearly stepping on her heels, grinning all the way.