“Okay. Thanks, Dr. Cambri.”
The connection clicked off and she was left listening to a dial tone. Feeling unreal, she hung up the phone. Quen was watching her when she looked up, his eyebrows high.
“Aren’t those the symptoms of—”
“Daniel’s virus, yes,” she said, brow furrowed. “But there was no way she could have come in contact with it. She never goes in his lab, and if Daniel brought it out accidentally, he’d be sick, too.”
Quen’s eyes slid to the ugly bag of black slime. “You don’t think . . .”
Trisk shook her head. “It can’t jump to a plant,” she said, starting to pace a wider arc. “I’ve worked with both their genomes, and they don’t mesh.”
“But if they did?”
She stopped, gripping the back of the chair with a white-knuckled strength. “Then Angie will be fine,” she said, pulse slowing. “If she was exposed to Daniel’s virus, she’ll be fine. It can’t reproduce outside of the lab.” But that she’d come in contact with it was a problem.
Quen shifted farther away from the foul, black bag. “I didn’t think coughing up blood was one of the symptoms.”
“It is if you overdose,” she said absently, wondering if she should call Daniel. “But she’d have to eat, like, a tablespoon of it,” she finished, a horrible feeling of having been remiss settling deep in the pit of her soul as she looked at the remains of her tomato. Angie had taken one home Thursday. If Daniel’s virus was attacking her plants, the toxins might build up to a lethal dose before the plant died.
Fingers shaking, she grabbed her purse and keys. “I need to go.”
16
Kal pulled into Global Genetics, scanning the nearly empty lot for any sign of Trisk before bringing his car to a halt and turning off his headlights. It was just after six, the afternoon’s results party long since over, but the lights were still on in the third-floor offices. A few cars were scattered about, support staff and late-shift security, mostly. Everyone who hadn’t moved the celebration to Riverside Smokehouse had gone home.
“Except for Rick and Barbara,” he mused aloud, seeing his Cadillac and her flower-decaled VW bug in their reserved spots. The thought of the two of them engaging in a tryst came and went. Rick was a living vampire, and for all his playboy tendencies and looks, he was obviously close to the top of the hierarchy in his camarilla or he wouldn’t have gotten the job. That Rick would go to his early-fifties secretary to satisfy his mild bloodlust was ludicrous.
But odder things have happened, Kal thought as he got out. As expected, Daniel’s virus had worked perfectly, the airborne dispersal downing an entire building in Vietnam and allowing the U.S. forces to move in safely and take it with minimal shots fired. Global Genetics was celebrating, but Daniel had seemed distracted and uncaring that he’d just changed the world.
Smug, Kal strode to the main entrance, not needing to use his building pass to get in as it wasn’t quite after normal work hours. The two-story reception area was empty, the front desk dark. The sound of a vacuum cleaner fought with loud music echoing into the lobby. It was coming from the largest meeting room, both mahogany doors flung wide. That was where the results party had been, and Kal headed for it. If anyone would know where Rick was, Barbara would.
Sure enough, the woman was there amid the streamers and containers of potluck food, looking odd but in control in her tall boots and overdone makeup as she organized the cleanup to the tune of “Wild Thing.” “Dr. Kalamack!” she exclaimed when she saw him, her steps almost prissy as she went to take the arm off the record player. Smiling, she tugged on the vacuum cleaner cord until the man running it noticed and turned it off. “What brings you back? I think the interns moved the party to Riverside.”
“That’s where I’ve been, actually. I’m looking for Rick,” he said, and the woman wobbled closer on her high heels, clearly having had too much to drink. She touched her hair to make sure it was in place. Even though her baby-blue vinyl dress was too young for her, her white calf-high boots and tall hair helped her pull off the look.
“I haven’t seen him since he got that long-distance call and barricaded himself in his office,” she said, flushed and fanning herself. “There was a miscalculation in the dosage, and he’s taking hell for it.” Barbara stopped before him, having to look up as she gave him her most fetching smile. “Phew, I’m tired,” she said, gently rubbing her neck. “Just can’t party like I used to.”
She turned to the cleanup crew moving toward the open bar, and Kal’s smile went stilted when he saw the beginnings of a rash on her neck. “Stay away from that booze until I get the cart over here!” she yelled, then turned back. “I’ll find him if you like. He’s probably still here.”
“He is,” he said lightly, inching away from her. “His car is still in the lot. If you see him, tell him I’m looking for him. I’ll be in my office for a few hours.”
“It’s Friday, Dr. Kalamack!” Barbara said enthusiastically. “You should be at Riverside Smokehouse with the kids.”
Kal glanced at the cake, CONGRATULATIONS DANIEL still legible in red icing. “No rest for the wicked,” he said as he took a piece already cut and waiting on a paper plate. “Go home, Barbara. Someone else can clean this up.”
“Soon as I get that alcohol back in Rick’s office,” she said, a thin finger moving between her neck and collar. “Have a nice weekend, Dr. Kalamack.”
“Thanks, Barb. See you Monday.” Careful not to spill the cake, Kal headed for the lobby. His thoughts spun as he strode to the elevator and hit the down button. She’d been exposed. But how? He’d only infected Trisk’s underground field.
Curious, he thought as the doors opened and he got in. Barbara seldom went downstairs. Something or someone had brought it up. Daniel’s clean-room practices were better than that, but the virus had gotten out somehow. The tomatoes? he wondered, seeing as they hadn’t been clean-room protected in over a year. Hell, he’d seen Trisk’s assistant put a basket of them by the front door yesterday for people to take home.
Frowning, he tried to recall if the basket had been empty when he’d passed it. He’d introduced Daniel’s virus into Trisk’s field three days ago. He’d never have thought that enough would remain on the plants to infect humans. But if it had, it would only hasten Trisk’s downfall, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone permanently.
The doors slid open, and he stepped out. George saw him immediately, rattling his newspaper as he turned to a new section. “Hi, George. Anyone bring you cake yet?” Kal called out as he lifted the plate in invitation.
“Barbara brought me a piece a couple of hours ago,” the man said as he set his newspaper down in anticipation. “But I’d eat another. I thought you’d be at Smokehouse. It’s Friday.”
Looking for signs of infection, Kal smiled and handed him the cake. “Just a few things to wrap up before I call it a week,” he said, his skin prickling as he tapped a line. “The party cut my day short.”
“Thanks.” George took the cake. “I hear you about the party. I could—”
“Obscurum per obscurius,” Kal said softly, his now-free hand directing the energy the words had marshaled. “Whoops!” he added as George’s eyes rolled up. Scrambling, he saved the cake from hitting the floor, but the man’s head struck the desk as he collapsed. There was no sign of a rash that he could see, and Kal frowned. If anyone should be sick from an accidental release, it would be George.
“Sleep tight.” Leaving the cake, he used George’s master bypass key to open the door and slip through so there would be no record of him entering the downstairs labs. Immediately his nose wrinkled at the faint smell of decay, but that bothered him less than the bright yellow tape sealing off Daniel’s area.
“Quarantine?” he mused aloud as he passed it. It was a rather extreme reaction for having miscalculated the dosage, and his concern grew as he continued on to his shared office space with Trisk and used George’s key to open it to hide he’d ever been there.
; Jerking back, Kal put a hand over his face when a putrid stench rolled out past the open door. Shit, it’s bad, he thought as he flicked on the light. Breath held, he went in.
“My God,” he whispered when he saw what was left of Trisk’s tomato field. After three days, he would expect some wilting, perhaps the fruit dropping, but the field was nothing but a broken-stemmed black wasteland. It appeared as if it had been burned, puddles of black goo showing where there’d once been tomatoes, broken, smutty branches still standing like piked soldiers in a lost battlefield.
In a horrified awe, he pressed closer to the glass to get a better look. It was getting easier to bear the smell, but his brow furrowed. He would swear he hadn’t miscalculated the dosage to infect the field. Something was working differently than he had anticipated.
But then his frown mutated into a satisfied smile. Trisk’s tomato was an utter failure. As far as anyone would know, she’d made a toxic fruit and passed it off as the agricultural savior of the third world. Even better, anyone who ate one of the infected tomatoes would be in danger of getting sick from Daniel’s virus. Trisk would be lucky to find a job as a sewage inspector.
“Her entire product line is destroyed,” Kal whispered, fixated on the broken ruin.
“It’s worse than you think,” Rick said from the open doorway, and Kal spun, shocked to see him standing there, his tie loosened and his shirt almost untucked. His shoulder-length hair was in disarray, and he looked rattled. “What are you doing here?”
“I came down to see where the stench was coming from,” Kal ad-libbed, and the living vampire nodded as he shuffled in and slumped into one of the rolling chairs, head in his hands to stare at the floor. “Rick?” Kal cautiously came closer. “Does Trisk know about this?”
His eyes flicked up and Rick leaned back. “Hell if I know.” His eyes shut, and fear crossed his face, shocking Kal. Vampires were never afraid. Even when they should be. “I’m not a geneticist,” Rick said, barely above a whisper, and Kal lurched to the door, looking down the hall to make sure no one was out there listening. “My master told me to come here. Make sure this virus of Daniel’s wouldn’t impact the vampire population or the human population—in that order. I told him it was safe.” He looked up, expression riven. “And now I’ve got a fever,” he said, holding his hand out to watch it shake. “I can’t die yet!” he exclaimed, letting it fall. “I don’t have enough set aside to retire or a place to stay out of the light. Or anyone to keep me alive.” Panic widened his eyes. “My master will have to cull me. No one is allowed to turn if they don’t have their scion already arranged.”
Shocked, Kal stared at Rick’s outright fear, realizing that the confidence, the sly power that all living vampires possessed, was a lie they told themselves so they could somehow survive. They knew what horrors awaited them at the end of their life, that they would become as beasts. Even when they were prepared, to die meant to become something they had both feared and loved all their lives.
“It’s okay, Rick,” he said, and the man’s frantic gaze landed on his. “Daniel’s virus can’t kill Inderlanders. You’re based on a human genome, so you’ll get a rash and a fever, but you won’t die. Even if you overdose.”
“Are you sure?” he whispered, and Kal nodded.
“Absolutely,” he said, smiling until the hard edges of fear left Rick. “Weres are so far from their human ancestry that they will hardly notice, and witches not at all. The undead, your master? He won’t get sick either. He’ll be pleased with you when you tell him, yes?”
Rick’s shoulders slumped as he took a shaky breath. His eyes fell to his hands, his fingers tangled together, and he set them on his knees. That fast, he found his mask, the need to dominate and subjugate forcing his fear of his future back to the recesses where it would linger until the pressure of darkness and loneliness forced it bubbling to the surface again.
Tossing his hair back, Rick rose, the terror safely hidden. But Kal could see it. The living vampire fixed his tie, then his hair. “Then all I have to worry about is why a perfectly safe virus is spreading through Vietnam, killing humans like the black plague’s evil twin.”
Lip twitching, Kal glanced at the field of goo. “Killing? Impossible. I saw the dosage.”
“Wolfe says the military docs say it found a carrier.” Rick shuddered as he fixed his cuffs, the beginnings of a rash peeping past them. “It has a place to grow, somewhere acidic to multiply and condense its toxin. The government wants to send a focus group. I don’t know what to tell them to do to avoid getting sick.” He looked up, the fear still lurking at the back of his eyes. “If you see Daniel, tell him he’s under arrest. I’m supposed to put him under quarantine.” His eyes closed. “People are dying in the streets in ’Nam. It’s spreading like wildfire.”
“But it can’t,” Kal stated, and the fear returned to Rick as he realized Kal’s earlier promise might be hollow.
“There’s no pattern to it,” Rick said. “Even when accounting for the Inderland immunity. Like an angel of God strolling through the cobbled streets, it’s taking out entire human families, skipping others. No pattern, none at all.”
“But not Inderlanders,” Kal said, his shoulders stiffening. It shouldn’t be killing anyone. And how was it spreading? Trisk’s tomato? he thought, immediately dismissing it. He’d made her tomato susceptible, not a carrier and able to serve as an incubator. The dosage must be wrong. That would account for the utter destruction of Trisk’s field as well.
Rick’s face was haggard. “Inderlanders? So far, no reports of death,” he said, taking his handkerchief and swabbing the back of his neck. “So far.” He looked at the handkerchief, hand shaking as he saw little drops of blood on it. “Shit.”
“I worked on the dosage calculations. It shouldn’t have any effect outside the building,” Kal said, and Rick laughed, a hint of hysteria in it.
“It’s hitting the entire country,” he said, rising unsteadily. “They’ve blocked travel in and out. The local Weres and witches are keeping the area together, setting up camps, keeping the food supplies, law in place. We’re all going to die,” he said, lurching to put his hand on the doorjamb. “Even if this doesn’t kill us, we’re all going to die.”
“It can’t do this,” Kal said, but Rick wasn’t listening, head down as he mumbled.
“Die,” Rick said, stumbling into the hall. “I’ve got to find a hole. No one is going to bury me properly. I have to do it myself.”
Kal looked at the decay-blackened field. He was sure he hadn’t miscalculated the effective dose. The only answer remaining was that he’d accidentally made Trisk’s tomato into a carrier. My God. What have I done? he thought, then shoved it down. No one knew it was him. No one ever would.
“Rick? Rick!” he called as he leaned into the hall, and Rick turned, staggering to hold himself up against the wall, though he couldn’t possibly be that sick—yet. “Have you told anyone Trisk’s field is infected?” Kal asked.
Fear flashed through Rick’s eyes, fear at what his master would say when he found out Rick had failed to keep their people safe. “Not yet. I wanted to talk to her first.”
Thank God. Kal steeled his expression. “I think it’s Dr. Cambri’s tomato, not an incorrect dosage, that’s causing the deaths,” he said, and Rick’s eyes flicked to the office behind him. “The T4 Angel is a cash crop in ’Nam. You saw her seed field. It’s putrefying. If Trisk’s Angel tomato is a carrier, we have to eliminate it before it can spread any farther. Do you keep records in your office of who it’s been sold to?”
“I don’t know. Why?” Rick asked, and Kal stifled a surge of impatience.
“We have to burn the fields,” he said, the rotting vegetation somehow smelling stronger in the hallway than in his office. “Starting with Dr. Cambri’s seed field and ending with every field in the third-world countries. How long will it take to get a list of who’s growing them?”
Rick looked better for having been given a task, and Kal realized h
ow fragile vampires really were, abused children growing up weak and strong at the same time. “I don’t know. I’ll ask Barbara.”
Wrong answer. “Wait. Rick,” Kal called when the vampire turned to go upstairs. “I need your help first. I don’t have authority to sterilize the seed field. You do. We have to destroy Trisk’s tomatoes before they make anyone else here sick.”
“I don’t know how to sterilize the seed field,” Rick said, and Kal glanced back in through the open door to the ugly field beyond.
“It’s in the computer,” Kal said. “Just log in and ask it. The computer will walk you through it.”
“Now?” Rick said as he came back, and Kal felt a wisp of relief. If it was Rick’s name on the request, no one would come to him for answers as to why the field and most of the evidence had been destroyed.
“I can’t take that stench any longer,” Kal said as he darted back into the office and spun the chair around for Rick to sit in. “Can you do it? I need to go to the desiccator and destroy the seeds Angie set up yesterday.”
“Sure.” Rick sat, his fingers hesitant as he typed in his name and then a password.
“We can’t let any of this out,” Kal added, backing away as a list of instructions came up for how to hook up a tank of tissue dissolver to the sprinkler system. Not only would it cause any remaining cells to explode, as well as destroying the virus, but it was flammable, leaving a pristine, untainted soil in which to start the next crop if someone dropped a match. And someone would.
“Got it,” Rick said distantly, and Kal gave his shoulder a reassuring touch before darting into the hall. But it was not the desiccator he went to, instead going to Daniel’s lab and adjoining office, breaking the quarantine seal, and slipping inside.
Steps light, he made his way to where the active virus was kept using only the dim, ambient glow from the machines. He slipped two vials into his pocket, turning to smile at the large glass jugs of alcohol used for sterilization. “Perfect,” he whispered, straining as he threw one across the room, where it shattered against a hood.