Every Last Drop

not heard him.The folks inside take note of his presence. —What? What? —Urn, I. So sorry, Miss, but I, I did, urn, knock, and.—What, Gladstone?—Nothing. I mean, urn, someone, a, urn, new, urn.His arm is waving at me, indicating my presence, despite the fact that it is invisible to the people he's speaking with.—A new, urn, applicant. And I, urn, know you like to greet each one, urn, personally, so I.—An intercom, Gladstone. We have a perfectly good one. Or has that broken now too?—No, I, urn, I. I buzzed and. Would you like to, urn? —Wait. Gladstone.The other voice has taken over, the one that shares my opinion about things around here being a mess. —Urn, yes?—Is there someone out there? —Urn, I.He pulls his head back, looks at me to make sure I'm still there, then sticks his head back into the room. —Yes, urn. There. Yes.—Motherfucker! See! See! A mess! These people. No regard for security. Nounderstanding of protocol. Is it any wonder things like this shit come up?—They're not these people. They're our people. You, of all people, should getthat.—Don't, not now. This is no joke. And it's no time for remedial lessons incompassion and understanding. You!Gladstone s back stiffens. —Urn, yes?—You bring someone up here again without clearing it through me, you'll be back in the dorms.—I, urn, yes, I. It's just, I did buzz and, urn. —Shut the fuck up. —Urn.I grab the edge of the door and pull it open, move Gladstone out of the way and step into the room.Sela goes for the piece strapped into the shoulder holster she's wearing over her tank top.Her hand freezes on the butt.—Oh Jesus.I raise a hand. —Yeah, good to see you too.Her hand stays on the gun. —Did I say it was good to see you, Joe?—No, but I always try to read between the lines. Figured you going for your gun was how you express affection these days. —That not how she expresses affection at all, Joe.The girl comes out from behind her desk, puts a hand on Sela's arm, rubs her thumb across a vein that swells down the muscle. —Chill out, Sela.Sela takes her hand from the gun, but I'd be hard-pressed to describe her as chilled out. —Don't get too close to him.The girl comes toward me. —Don't be silly, it's Joe. What's he gonna do, kill me?She comes closer.—He'd never do that. He'd never hurt me at all.She smiles. —Well, except for maybe that time he slapped me.She squishes her face. —But I was being pretty bratty. Giving him a bad time about things.She stops in front of me. —Well, come on, Joe. What do you think?She gives a little spin, displaying her slacks, French-cuffed shirt, suit vest and expensively shorn hair. —Have I grown up right?I take off my huge sunglasses and show her the fresh scar tissue. —I don't know, maybe I need a better look.She claps, wraps her arms around me, turns her face into my chest and inhales. —Oh, Joe, you always know just what to say to make me feel safe.I stand there with her arms around me, my own arms at my sides, looking at Sela.She shakes her head. —She her own thing, our girl, isn't she, Joe?—The logistics of it are just devastating. I mean, it was one thing to say we were going to establish a Clan, take in anyone who wanted to join, supply them with blood, and then make the cure available to them once I find it.She points at the twin flat-screen computer monitors on her desk, the piles of paper. —But it is so another thing to actually be doing it.She flops back in her leather office chair and kicks her heel against the floor, spinning slow and lazy.—Don't misunderstand, I do not have any regrets. I'm young, I have the energy, God knows I'm smart enough to handle it all, but III totally fess that it's way harder than I expected it to be.She stops spinning, launches herself from the chair and begins circling the desk, plucking papers at random.—I completely miscalculated demand. I mean, the numbers are way out of whack. There's only a few thousand infected on Manhattan, right? The ones aligned with Clans, why would they take a risk, move over to us? We assumedmostly wed get Rogues. How many could that be? With a food source strictly limited by the land available, its just common sense that predators not operating with a pack are going to get squeezed out. So we assumed a couple dozen Rogues, at most, a like amount of crossovers from the Clans, people willing to take that chance because they were committed to the idea of a cure, and some refugees who got the word and managed to make it over to the Island.She shakes one of the papers.—At this point, in our first year, we were assuming a max membership of eighty. We prepped for one hundred. Just to be safe.She crumples the paper and throws it on the Persian rug underfoot. —Two-hundred and sixty-one.She shakes her head.—I mean. Holy shit. The renovations. The initial renovations were hard enough. But you buy a building, grease the right palms, bribe the tight asses on the neighborhood committee and get to work. Once the materials start moving in and out, the people on the street have no idea what you're actually doing inside. The rooms were so nice. We really went the extra mile. No Pottery Barn or IKEA crap, really nice beds, furnishings. Tried to give each room a character. Like a boutique hotel. That's what the builders thought we weredoing.She goes to the door, opens it and points at her outer office. —Now? Did you see it? In the halls. On the stairs. How do we bring a crew in here to tear out the walls and turn the second and third floors into the barracks we need? How do I take delivery on a hundred bunk beds? Like no one is going to notice and ask what the hell is going on. Little things. The elevator. I cant get a repair service in because I don't have room to hide all these people. A building this size, things are constantly breaking, wearing out. Were taxing the plumbing like you wouldn't believe. The longer these things go without maintenance, the worse everything gets.She throws the papers in the air, stands there as they snow around her. —And food, just regular food, were sneaking it in. So the neighbors don't know how many are here. I mean, the FreshDirect truck cant be rolling up every day and unloading enough groceries for a cafeteria, can it? I mean. My God. Jesus. Shit.She sighs, looks at me, smiles.—Listen to me. I mean, could I sound a little more like my dad? He d come home from work, it d be just like this. The lab or the office or both, something was always blowing up. All he wanted to do was be up to his eyes in research, but it was always patent this or government oversight that or board of directorsare cock-suckers.She rubs her forehead.—And that's what really kills. Not being in the lab. I mean, I know I have responsibilities here, and I took all this on and I have to deal, but it's not even what I want to be doing. I mean.She drops her head back and opens her mouth wide. —Gaaahhh.She rolls her eyes.—This stuff is so boring. And I mean, the whole point is a cure, right? I mean, that's why these people are packing in here, right? I mean, why name the Clan Clan Cure if I never get to work on it?She leans against the desk, opens a cigarette box and takes out a clove. —And that place. It's a whole different headache.  Cause the Vyrus, It's testy as hell. It's really, what's so sad, it's really a pussy. I mean, there are other viruses that are way more robust. Think about it.She comes over and puts her cigarette in her mouth and leans in. —Light?I snap a match and she touches her cigarette to it.—Thanks.She moves away, blows a cloud.—Think about it. The Vyrus, it can only live inside the human body. It can only survive in a human body. It can only spread itself blood to blood. And it's so hyper, it colonizes host cells so quickly and burns them out, that it needs to have its environment constant/y refreshed. And it kills its host and rarely gets a chance to reproduce. I mean, is that inefficient or what? Seriously, it is one crap piece of engineering. One of those evolutionary steps that's so random and poorly designed that it actually proves evolution. I mean, why would God bother with a thing like that? Intelligent design? Not.She crosses to the window. Lifts the hook that holds the shutters closed behind the curtains.—Something fussy like that, just getting a look at it is a pain. Creating a stable environment for it outside a host? Talk about tedious. And then, a thing like this, finding a cure for a virus, you don't do that alone. Not even when you're smarter than everyone else.She opens the shutter a crack, puts her hand through and parts the curtain. —There's just way too much busy work. I mean. Cultures, batches of this and that, computer modeling, archiving. Its like working on a code. Like how whenthey try to break a code they sometimes give just a piece of it to each team. So they don't really know what they're working on. Keep them isolated from one another. I have to do that. I mean, the lab I assembled for this at Horde Bio Tech, it's not staffed with assholes. Well, some of them are assholes, but they're really fucking smart assholes. Show these people the whole Vyrus, let them get a good look at it and see its behavior? You will see some serious freaking out. But.She turns, light from a streetlamp drops through the curtain and crosses her face, makes her perfect skin glow. —It is amazing.She lifts her hand to the light, stares at it reflected there. —That's one of the things that's amazing. Light. Like we've been doing things with light. These guys at ASU, they've been blasting viruses in blood samples with a laser. Like fifty megawatts per square centimeter. Which isn't half as nasty as it sounds. And so, like, we've known for a long time you can kill viruses with UV radiation, but that causes mutation. And mutation leads to adaptation over time. So, these guys, they've been using visible light pulses. And it works. It.She holds up her cigarette, wiggles it, creating a jagged stream of smoke. —It vibrates a virus, physically disrupts the virus shell, this thing called thecapsid. It cripples the virus it affects. Virus cant function, and dies. So.Her eyes are big, staring a million miles.—The Vyrus, your Vyrus, goes haywire when exposed to solar UVA, it mutates. But not adaptive mutations. Or not that we can see because it happens way too fast. But, but, maybe we can find a wave of radiation, a visible wavelength to shatter the Vyrus1 capsid? It's so, it's way outside the box, but the Vyrus isn't in the box, so this is the kind of stuff we have to. I mean.She stares farther, going away from the room, deep inside some other place. —It is so fucking cool.She takes a big drag.—It's like, like being a pioneer. Like none of the rules apply and you can try anything. Anything. Nothing is out of bounds. And. Oh, and I said about computer models. The good thing about having too many people here, it gives us a really good pool to draw samples from. And, because the Vyrus, it does mutate. Radically. From person to person. I mean, we've got a couple people here who infected other people here. And even then, the same strain passing from host to host, it mutates. But within a range. I think. So we can draw samples. And like I said, the Vyrus is a total puss, and if you mishandle a specimen it croaks like