Taavi sighed once more and spat over the balcony. “I was given the position of the chief of security for Site 53 during the facility’s construction in Brazil. We cleared away the jungle to create a space for the runway and the building. It was a secret project with hundreds of Korean workers toiling away for twenty-four hours a day. Several of them died from heat exhaustion. The facility was completed in just under three months and when it was finished, I was supposed to go home. That’s when things went horribly wrong.”
Taavi tapped his hand nervously on the railing and Grady prepared for him to use the distraction of his story to attack, but the strike didn’t come. Instead, he continued, “My wife and children were abducted by my own government and held in captivity along with the families of most of my soldiers. We received word that the same had happened with the North Korean’s families. They wanted to ensure we’d stay loyal and work on whatever project they sent our way. Within a few days, we began receiving scientists who’d worked on projects in Korea and they needed subjects, so we began taking people from a nearby village. Those people became the Cursed, as you know. I tried to keep the facility secure, but eventually the Cursed escaped and I ordered the facility to be abandoned. That’s when Hamid Abdullah Sari murdered my family. He killed them due to my failure to keep the facility operational.”
“Who’s Hamid Abdullah Whatever?”
“He is the Council’s Facilitator, the spokesman if you will.”
“The Council?” Grady didn’t know what to make of the story so far.
“The Council is made up of several people, including an Iranian woman named Kasra Amol. She is the leader of the group. The Cursed was the Council’s idea. They wanted to destroy the West and they’ve succeeded.”
Grady gestured out into the night. “But at what cost? The infected overran the damn country. They’re everywhere.”
“They will die off, eventually. The Cursed are incapable of producing their own food. They can only consume. Within a few years, they will have eaten most of everything that they can and starve to death. Then the Council’s mission will be complete. The world will be cleared of non-Believers and Allah’s children will inherit the Earth—or at least that’s how they sold it to the zealots in the Iranian government.”
“I thought North Koreans were atheist?”
Taavi ducked his chin. “For the most part. That is something they would deal with eventually. But for now, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“Those relationships never work out,” Grady grumbled.
“No, you are right, my friend.”
“I ain’t your fucking friend. Your little sob story glossed right over the experiments you guys did on me. That’s what—”
“We did not agree with the experiments in the first place, the ones that created the Cursed. Then, when it was discovered that there was a natural immunity to the virus that protected certain people from infection, the scientists were intrigued. They petitioned for greater numbers of villagers in order to identify the immune. In all, we found twelve out of a village of about a thousand people. Those villagers who weren’t immune, well, they obviously turned and we kept them in massive holding pens. When your team arrived, the decision was made to let a small number of the Cursed free to defend the facility and then we were to kill the ones that had gotten outside. But the djinn was out of the lamp at that point. It was too late. You were captured and proved to be immune. Your body was strong and able to take much more than the malnourished, weak bodies of the villagers, so the scientists focused on you. They wanted to discover a way to immunize all of Iran against the Cursed. Instead, they created something more…foul. You are an anathema to the Cursed, able to walk amongst them without fear. I do not even know what that makes you.”
“It makes me fucking pissed off,” Grady growled.
“Believe me, I had nothing to do with the experiments. I just provided the security for the site.” He held up his hands to stave off the comments that sprang to Grady’s lips. “I know. I know, that fact does not absolve me of my involvement in the destruction of our world. But, please believe me, Grady Harper. My family was being held hostage. When the infected in the holding pens finally broke free and we were forced to abandon Site 53, they were killed. The Facilitator shot my children in front of my wife while I was on the phone with them. Then he took my wife and said she would be given to the Army to be raped over and over until she died. In truth, I do not know what happened to her. But I have vowed to find a way back to Iran so that I may kill the Facilitator and desecrate his remains. He must never be allowed to enter Heaven.”
So, there it is then, Grady thought. Taavi had been an unwilling pawn in the game of some mysterious multi-governmental group that he called the Council. His family had been taken hostage and held to make him perform his duties and killed when he failed. Was he really to blame? Would he have done the same thing if the roles were reversed?
Grady searched his mind to remember if Taavi had been directly involved in the experiments in any way, but the images that flashed by were mostly of masked scientists and an occasional glimpse of Taavi walking through the area, separated from everyone by glass and metal jail cell bars. In the little bit that he remembered, Grady certainly seemed to view the man as more of a jailer or prison guard than one of the assholes poking him with needles or pushing him into
