that I might have had about the big dog staying outside to, I don’t know, guard the sidewalk or something.
I was so busy watching what the dog did that I walked right into Becks, bumping her forward a half step. “Hey, watch it,” I began.
I looked. And promptly understood why the rest of the team was standing frozen in their tracks at the end of the short entrance hall, staring into the gutted warehouselike depths of the former IT building. I’d been expecting a dingy little basement operation, something barely more technically advanced than a buh of kids running their own pirate news site out of their parents’ house. This was a functional lab, operating totally outside all sane safety precautions, but still equipped way beyond anything I might have anticipated.
All the interior walls not essential for structural support had been knocked out at some point, replaced with a maze of cubicles, portable isolation tents, and live animal cages. Racked computer servers stood side-by-side with rabbit hutches. Hydroponic beds studded the floor, growing healthy-looking crops of things I vaguely recognized from Maggie’s garden. The light was an even, brilliant white, and about half the people I could see moving around the computers were wearing either sunglasses or the clear plastic bands hospitals sometimes used to protect the eyes of individuals with reservoir conditions.
Kelly was staring at the scene with her lip curled upward, looking utterly disgusted. “This is… horrific,” she breathed, turning toward me. “We have to get out of here. This is an abomination. It’s a violation of so many medical and ethical regulations that I can’t even start to count them, and—”
“And it’s not under CDC control, which means it’s not okay to break the rules, is that it?” asked Maggie. Her tone was icy.
Kelly stopped midtirade, taking a shaky breath. “You don’t understand,” she said, slowly. “This is… the things they could do here, with this sort of equipment, are practically unthinkable. That’s a genetic sequencer.” She indicated a machine I didn’t recognize. “They could build a whole new version of the virus, if they wanted to.”
“Let’s not antagonize the nice people, okay?” I asked. “You can be offended by their ethics later. When we aren’t outnumbered.” A lab this size would make body disposal distressingly easy. The last thing I wanted to do was give Dr. Abbey a reason.
The massive dog—Joe—ambled up and stopped beside me, panting amiably. Maggie promptly knelt down and offered her hand, knuckles first, like she was trying to attract the attention of one of her own, much less scary- looking, canines. Joe deigned to sniff it. A moment later, he was slobbering all over her palm, tail wagging with delight as she used her other hand to start scratching behind his ears.
“Most people are a lot less relaxed about Joe,” said Dr. Abbey, rejoining the rest of us. She’d shed her rifle somewhere between the door and the lab floor, but she was still wearing the lab coat. At least some of the overhead lights must have been using George’s beloved blacklight frequencies, because the fabric fluoresced slightly in the glare.
“Most people don’t like risking infection when they don’t have to,” said Kelly.
“Well, those people have sticks shoved half a mile up their asses,” said Dr. Abbey. “Besides, Joe’s no threat. He’s immune, aren’t you, sweetheart?” The mastiff looked around at the sound of his name, tail still wagging frantically back and forth.
The rest of us, with the exception of Maggie—who was still deeply involved in her dog-worshipping duties— turned to stare at her. Surprisingly, it was Alaric who found his voice first, asking, “Are you serious? Immune? But he’s got to weigh more than sixty pounds. How can he possibly be immune?”nt>
Dr. Abbey shrugged. “He’s got the canine forms of five reservoir conditions, and the initial signs of developing a sixth. He’s never going to be a daddy, since the fourth one he developed was testicular Kellis-Amberlee—I had to have him neutered after that, poor guy—but he’s never going to amplify fully, either. He’s immune.”
My thoughts raced as I tried to absorb her words. It didn’t help that George was shouting in my head, demanding answers and denying the possible truth of Dr. Abbey’s claims at the same time. Kelly turned to look at Dr. Abbey, her mouth moving silently as she tried to form a protest that wasn’t willing to come out. Even Becks was just staring, looking as surprised as I’d ever seen her. That was saying something, because Becks doesn’t
Maggie looked up from her enthusiastic worship of Joe, a narrow line forming between her eyebrows as she considered Dr. Abbey. “Five reservoir conditions in one dog?” Dr. Abbey nodded. “But how? I’ve never heard of anything, canine or human, developing more than one.”
“Oh, that part was simple,” said Dr. Abbey, and beamed. This smile was pure professional pride. “I induced them.”
All of us fell silent at that, even George. Maggie’s hands stilled, dropping away from the dog. The distant beeping of the computers, the occasional squeal or bark from a lab animal, and the footsteps of the other technicians provided a strange sort of background music. Joe looked between the humans and let out a resonant, echoing bark.
Dr. Abbey reached down to pat him on the head. “Well, since we’ve obviously got a lot to talk about, why don’t you come to my office? There’s cookies and tea, and I can tell you all about how I’ve managed to pervert the laws of nature. Come on, Joe.” Waving for the rest of us to follow, she walked forward, into the bustling lab.
“Are we going with her?” asked Alaric.
“Got a better idea?”
“Nope,” he said, glumly.
“All right, then. Following the crazy lady to our deaths it is.” I shrugged and walked after her, trying to look nonchalant. The day was getting more interesting by the minute. I just had to hope it was the sort of interesting we’d live to talk about later.
The nature of the so-called reservoir conditions has never been fully explained, although a great many theories have been proposed, some reasonable, some not. Why does the KA virus manifest its live state in certain parts of the body? Why does that live virus then fail to spread the infection according to the laws that govern all of its other manifestations? Why is retinal KA most common in females, while cerebro-spinal is most common in males? Nobody really seems to have a clue.
We do know that reservoir conditions are becoming more common, with reported cases of retinal, cerebro- spinal, ovarian, testicular, and pituitary KA in both human and animal hosts up by more than eighteen percent overthe last eleven years. There are rumors of new reservoir conditions manifesting themselves, conditions with scary names like “cardiac” and “pulmonary.” Yet still, no one knows why.
Taken all together, it’s enough to make one question whether we truly dodged the end of the human race… or merely delayed it by a decade or two.
—From
Nine
Dr. Abbey’s “office” was a euphemistically named cubicle only slightly larger than the ones around it. It didn’t help that it was jammed with file boxes, outmoded computer equipment, and—best of all—clear plastic tanks full of assorted insects and arachnids. I don’t have a problem with spiders. Spiders can’t carry Kellis-Amberlee. Ditto giant hissing cockroaches and squiggly things with way too many legs. Becks didn’t share my disregard. Every time the squiggly thing moved, she sank farther back into her chair.
“It’s called comedy,” I muttered, and turned my attention back to Dr. Abbey.
She had shrugged out of her lab coat before pulling a bag of Oreos out of a filing cabinet and dumping them onto a paper plate. Now she was rummaging through the minifridge shoved under her desk, crouching in a way that I recognized as designed to put a minimum of stress on her knees. Joe the Mastiff was stretched out between her and us, enormous head resting between his forelegs. His pose was relaxed, but his eyes were alert, focusing on whoever had moved most recently. That meant his focus was mostly on Becks, who couldn’t stop flinching.
