Infected (19 page)

His crooked grin nearly broke her heart. The Double-Double—his favorite cheeseburger—was a long-standing joke between them ever since she beat him in their first climbing race, and he paid off the bet with a trip to In-N-Out.

She knew he was trying to keep her mind off the fact that in less than two hours, her body was going to start to destroy itself. And it almost worked, especially when he leaned in and kissed her, gently at first, and then more passionately.

His lips on hers were warm and soft. No one would ever guess that under their skin, a deadly pathogen was replicating and spreading through their blood. Carina wished she could get lost in the embrace, let it take them the way it had the other night, when reason gave way to passion and all her careful monitoring gave way to … love.

But every second that ticked by took them closer to death.

And Carina wasn’t giving up that easily—not on her life, and not on Tanner.

She pulled away after one last kiss, her hand cupping his face. She searched his eyes, wondering how he could remain so steadfastly behind her. She’d infected him. Led him into danger. Gotten him shot.

“We’re going to get through this” was what she settled for, even though the words would never be adequate. She took a deep breath and forced herself to concentrate. “Tanner—what about the IP address on the ring? What if it
could help us get the antidote? I mean, it’s a long shot … but even if it just gets us closer to Walter’s research, it would give us something to bargain with.”

“Okay, but we’re going to need a wireless connection to check into it. Look, there’s a Denny’s at the next intersection. They probably have Wi-Fi and they’re open twenty-four hours—think you can make it?”

Carina looked at the restaurant at the end of the shabby, run-down block. She had less than two hours left before she started to die, and this was the last place she would have chosen to spend it. “Yes, but what about you? Can you keep going?”

Tanner crouched and ran his fingers lightly along the edges of the wound, where the blood had dried on his shorts, a red so deep it looked almost black. “Well, it’s definitely stopped bleeding. It’s strange. I can feel it, but it isn’t exactly pain, you know? Well, you probably don’t know. It’s got to be this virus.”

He gingerly pushed his shorts up over his thigh. The wound—an area at the outer edge about three inches long—was jagged and messy, but already the worst of it seemed to be skimmed over with scar tissue.

“I mean, there’s no damage to the bone or anything, and it’s not like I can sterilize it now. Besides, I don’t feel like it’s going to slow me down. So my vote is, let’s agree it’s not even there, okay?”

“Tanner …”

“Car.” He let the fabric fall back over the gash. “Look. We have to focus on now. Later, when we’re … when things
have calmed down, we’ll worry about it. A little Neosporin and a couple Band-Aids, right?”

Carina doubted that topical first aid would do the trick, especially if an infection set in, which was likely, considering that the tissues had been in contact with filth and stagnant water. But she only nodded and forced a smile of her own. “Okay, then why are we still talking? Time is money.”

She started running down the street, knowing Tanner would follow right behind her, hoping that the wind on her face would dry her tears before he had a chance to see them.

It was a long city block to the Denny’s, which sat on a busy street lined with liquor stores and nail salons and run-down apartment buildings. There were a few cars in the parking lot, a couple of people visible in booths behind the windows. Carina ran steadily, her feet hitting the pavement in rhythmic strides that didn’t come close to winding her. Tanner kept up easily, and she could hear his breathing, steady and slow. If his leg was bothering him, it didn’t show; the limp had also disappeared completely.

They slowed to a walk when they reached the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. Inside, they slid into an empty booth.

“Listen, I just had one other idea,” she said.

“Name it.”

“Well, it’s just—you know that security guy, Baxter? He’s always been good to me. And you saw how he was with Sheila—it’s not like they’re all that close. I was thinking, maybe he would help us? Maybe he’d let us into her office. She’s got to have antidote stored there.”
And we’re running out of time
, she didn’t add.

But she didn’t have to. Tanner frowned, his eyebrows knitting together. It was taking a hell of a chance, but they didn’t have a lot of options left.

“You know how to reach him?”

“Yes, Mom made me learn his cell number a long time ago, the first time I ever came to a company event.”

Tanner dug the phone out of the backpack and handed it over. Carina dialed. It had only begun to ring when it was picked up.

“Baxter.”

“Hey, Baxter … this is Carina.”

“Where are you?” His tone was clipped, urgent; Carina reminded herself that he was trained for situations like this.

“Look, um, I have to ask you a favor. I mean a really, really big favor.”

“Anything.”

“And Sheila can’t know, okay? I mean, she really can’t—”

“My loyalty was to your uncle. And to your mother.”

The relief that coursed through Carina was almost overwhelming. “Look, we need to get into Sheila’s office. We don’t have much time. Can you help us?”

“Yes.” He answered without hesitation. “I have master clearance.”

“Can you pick us up? I mean, alone? We’re in South San Francisco.”

“I can be there in a half hour. What’s your location?”

Tanner had been leaning in close enough to hear both sides of the conversation. Before she could answer, he squeezed her hand and pointed across the street at a run-down little park, whispering in her ear, “Don’t say we’re at Denny’s.”

“We’ll wait for you in a park,” she told Baxter. She gave him the cross streets and hung up, praying that she wasn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.

“We’re cutting this really close,” she said. “Half an hour for him to get here, then at least an hour to the lab …”

“Don’t think about that. He might be here sooner. Let’s work on our plan B. Give me the address and I’ll get started.”

She took the pen Tanner handed her and quickly did the hex conversion on the back of her place mat, then slid it across the table. “Do you mind if I go try to clean up a little?”

“No problem, I was thinking the same thing. You go first, I’ll order.”

Carina walked quickly through the restaurant, trying not to draw attention, but no one even glanced at her disheveled appearance. Luckily, there was no one in the bathroom. Carina soaked a stack of paper towels and went to work. First she dabbed away all the dirt on her skin; her ankles and calves had been liberally streaked with mud. She scrubbed her hands until her nails were as clean as she could get them, then went to work on her
clothes. After trying to get the dirt off with towels, she soon decided it was a lost cause. Instead she stripped and ran water over the clothes, and turned her attention to her hair. Her hat had come off at some point in their escape, and her hair was tangled and dirty. Without a comb, she had to settle for using her fingers, but at least she was able to get out all the small twigs and leaves, and with a little water she was able to smooth it into almost-intentional-looking waves.

She only dared run the dryer through three cycles, so the clothes were still wet when she put them back on and she winced with the clammy chill. But at least they—and she—were a bit cleaner.

Tanner was sitting in a booth as far away as possible from the other customers, one with a view of the park so they could see Baxter when he arrived—and make sure he was alone. He had also managed to clean himself up, wiping most of the blood off so he looked relatively normal. He was hard at work on the laptop, two steaming cups on the table next to it—along with two plates loaded with toast, eggs, and bacon. Carina didn’t realize how hungry she was until her stomach growled in anticipation. She grabbed a fork and took a huge bite.

It was crazy. If she didn’t get the antidote soon, she was dead, but she wolfed down her food like she was preparing for a multiday siege.

“Pay dirt,” Tanner muttered, not looking up as his fingers flew over the keys, taking breaks only to eat. “That IP address? Server farm in Transnistria.”

“Trans … what?” Carina asked, taking a sip of coffee. It tasted like heaven.

“Transnistria. Breakaway territory from Moldova. Post–Soviet conflict zone, no one can touch it in any official capacity … got all kinds of illicit shit going on.…”

“Okay, let’s file that under more than I need to know.”

“Gotta admire Walter, though.”

“I do. Believe me. So what’s on there?”

Tanner raised his eyebrows and spun the laptop toward her. He grabbed a piece of toast and wolfed down half of it in two bites as Carina scanned the screen.

“This means nothing to me,” she said, scrolling through dozens of directories and hundreds of files with cryptic names and extensions she’d never seen before.

“It’s the real thing, Car, as far as I can tell.”

“Okay,” Carina said, turning the computer back toward Tanner. “And you got there with that clicker thing?”

“Yeah, got in first try. Pretty amazing.”

“Where is it now—did you put it back in your sock?”

“Yeah.…” He tapped his ankle, where the token generator bulged from the small pocket, and then his voice trailed off as he started tapping the keys again. Carina recognized the look of glazed concentration, and she slowly pushed the laptop lid closed on his fingers.

“Hey!” he protested, but he was smiling, and he held up his hands in defeat. “Fine, fine, but I’d sure love to see inside his process—”

“Maybe later. For now, we have places to go. Things to see. Eat up, you’re going to need the energy.”

Tanner was already moving on to the bacon. “What’s next?” he added through a mouthful.

“Well, considering that we’re”—
mere moments from death
, she had been about to say, but she didn’t have the heart.

Tanner swallowed and took a sip of coffee, his expression instantly subdued. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “We really are out of options, aren’t we?”

“I don’t know what else to do. The Albanians—who knows if there’s more of them, right? And since we don’t know how they found us the first time, we have to assume they’ll be able to find us again. They probably have reinforcements on their way.”

“Okay.… Well, you want to call her from here?”

Carina was silent for a moment. A thought had been nagging at her for a while, one she had been afraid to confront.

If they called Sheila, she would probably demand proof that they had Walter’s data before giving them the antidote. She might even refuse to trade until the information was in her hands.

And if that happened, she was sure to sell it. The virus and antidote would be bound together using Walter’s research and turned into a product that could be in foreign hands in no time, and an army halfway across the world would soon be arming its soldiers with powers that would enable them to crush anyone they wanted to in hand-to-hand combat. Their advantage could conceivably tip the balance of power in unstable nations; if they in turn sold it to others, the nature of war itself could be affected.

But the only other option was to destroy the password
generator and then take their own lives. If she called the major, she had enough to get the lab shut down and Sheila arrested. Work on the virus would halt, and its leakage into the world could be prevented. If they were lucky, no one would ever again die from exposure to the virus.

She and Tanner could be the last.

Carina shut her eyes, remembering the last night she saw Walter, how distracted he’d been. How he’d hesitated before going up to his room, as though there was something he wanted to say.

And her mother, throwing her arms around Carina tonight. The year she’d spent in agony, knowing her daughter thought she was dead. The awkward “I love you” that had been there all along, buried so deeply that it took all this suffering to finally bring it out.

Walter and her mother, both of them gone. Both dead. Without them, what did Carina have to live for? She might as well end her own life. It wouldn’t have to be the horrible, painful decline from the virus. She could step in front of a train, fall from a tall building. There were dozens of ways to die, even for a body infected with the virus. Carina wasn’t sure she believed in any kind of afterlife, but if there was one, she would be sharing it with the only people who had ever loved her.

Carina opened her eyes and found Tanner watching her, his expression knowing and infinitely sad. Because he knew her so well.

“Carina. No.”

“What do you mean, no? How can you know what I’m thinking?”

He shook his head and sighed. “I don’t know. Because I’m in love with you and think of you all day long? Because the other night made me feel even closer to you, when I already felt like we’re the same person half the time?”

Love … love
. Carina heard the other words he spoke, but her heart got stuck on that one and it reverberated inside her, taking over everything else.