The Infected 1: Proxy (67 page)

Finally, debating with himself for a long while first he wrote. "Don't give up." It was all he could do for her. It wasn't enough. He shifted back to his room, making Karen jump. She hadn't even known that he'd gone anywhere.

Her eyes looked worried when she saw his, not sitting down, afraid getting up again would be too hard, he walked out of the room without saying anything. Luckily she followed him, because he didn't know what to do really.

"Karen. I... need Director Moore. Can you get me to him?" His voice sounded odd, lacking emotion, but soft and gentle at the same time. Taking his hand she led the way, not up but down to level twelve. He was in his private quarters, not even getting ready for bed yet. Brian just stood in the door and told them what had happened, leaving nothing out.

"It's her. She's the infector. That poor little girl. I... I can't save her, can I?" Moore patted him on the back and Karen held him, but he didn't really feel any of it. Everything seemed so far away. He'd failed. Again. Like before, the first time he'd met the Jackal and his friend. When he failed Barbara Dorn. And now this innocent little girl was going to die because he wasn't good enough to save her.

Tears fell from his eyes, thick and dense, running down his face and hitting the floor. He didn't sob or anything like that. At least he didn't think so. He was too busy thinking to notice. After a few minutes, answering the questions asked of him, the director left to get his phone, so Brian walked away, Karen following. Floor nine was empty when he got there. It was late, after midnight, most people would be asleep or getting ready to. In his room, their room now, Brian laid down and closed his eyes. Not sleeping really, but not thinking about anything either.

By morning when Karen woke up he'd moved to sit in his chair, focused only on what he could do, ways to save the girl, to keep her alive, to cure the Infection that had savaged her young life. That was a joke of course. No one even knew what the Infection was. No virus had ever been found, no combination of chemicals or nano machines, no bacteria or genetic predisposition had been truly uncovered. It clearly ran in families at times, but no one knew why. It also hit people in regions where they lived in near total isolation from other people, so it didn't spread by any normal means.

If Brian didn't know what it was, he couldn't fix it. Could they suppress it at all? Maybe, but testing that would be a potential death sentence for whoever got close enough to check if that option failed. Isolation might work, but for how long? Did they need to leave the girl alone for the rest of her life? Could they? Infected tended to get more powerful the longer they lived. A few seemed to taper off over time, as their bodies aged and failed, but some got stronger. As far as he could tell anyone with a class five or greater ability tended to fall into that category across the board. Melany had to be something like a class seven or eight already. How long would it be before that little island wasn't enough to keep her power contained? For all he knew it already wasn't.

Brian's mind spun looking for a loophole, some way that he could trade his own life for hers even, anything. Nothing came to him.

He didn't get out of the chair to go work out, or do much of anything. Brian stretched his mind, desperately searching for something. Anything. By the second day he had to sleep, his mind just wouldn't work anymore. Then he slept for nearly a full day. After that he got up and showered, changed his clothing and went out to look for possible answers. No one had any for him. Not even one good idea.

Hitting bottom on it he went to the gym, fifteen, and worked himself to exhaustion pushing until Carl made him leave, trying to use pain to keep the thoughts from his head. In the afternoon he grabbed Marcia and took her outside to the back of the compound and practiced fighting with her, forcing her to work harder and harder to keep up with him. Moving no faster than normal, but not letting himself pause or think about what he wanted to do next. When they worked with weapons he did the same thing. By the end of it Marcia stood back, looking more than a little worried.

Then he ran the interior perimeter of the fence line until he couldn't stand any more. It was the next day before that happened. Resting for a while on the ground, clothing soaked in sweat, breathing regular and deep, Brian waited for something, but nothing happened at all. After a while he got up, found some water and started everything all over again.

Jason started bringing him food every six hours and made him eat, threatening to shoot him if Brian refused. The sidearm in his hand had the safety off, so Brian ate and drank water when it was offered. Other than that he worked. On the second day of this, without sleep or rest, Lauren came out with Marcia, her huge armored form glistened darkly, like a beetles shell.

"Here, you seem to be looking for a challenge." Lauren didn't wait, coming for him at over sixty miles per hour. He started to pull his knife, then left it in the sheath. Lauren was his friend, not someone to risk casually like that. The knife could actually kill her and this was just practice. Instead Brian stepped to the side calmly at the last second, then ran after her, his pace a lot slower than hers. A few steps later she had to slow in order to turn and try to attack again. When she slowed enough he jumped up on her back, climbing her like a tree, slapping the flat of his hand over the breathing ports on her armored face. She panicked and tried to grab him, which didn't work, Lauren lacking the needed flexibility to reach behind her head, her own super strong armored carapace in the way. She tried for his hand, to free her mouth and nose holes up, causing Brian to let go with the right hand and slap the left in place before she could get a good breath. This went on for a few minutes, her air reserve eventually running out, driving her to one knee, then both.

Hopping off of her back and jumping in front of her as fast as possible, not letting her recover, he kicked her in the chest plate knocking her back. Without pause the knife finally flew into his hand, the tip of it touching the slit of her mouth, ready to go in. The woman hissed, sucking air in desperately.

"I don't know for sure, but it should be long enough to reach the brain stem. Is that good enough for now? I could also go for trying to choke off the air supply if I didn't have the knife. Duct tape should work for that, if I could find some. Other than that... well, you'd just kill me." He smiled, at least Brian thought he did. Marcia just waved her hand at him to get off the woman.

He sheathed the knife and waited. Lauren got up slowly, then shook her head at Marcia, some kind of signal Brian just didn't understand and couldn't care about at the moment.

They left, so he started running again. After that he added in other exercises every few hours to give himself a small change and use some other muscles. He pushed until he couldn't do any more and then moved on to the next exercise. Then he ran again, a steady lope, not fast by any means, but not stopping either, except when required.

Marcia came back with Tobin, Dave, Lis and Soar. They all attacked at once without bothering to announce they were going to. Soar proved to be a problem and so did Marcia who seemed to be taking the whole thing much more seriously this time. He didn't win that one at all, in fact they "killed" him a half dozen times before he started figuring out how to win. After he got three in a row they all left, leaving him to run.

On day five the new man from team two, Hobbs, came out alone. He held a single stick about four foot long in his hand, smiling gently. His expression looked a lot like the one Mark generally wore for some reason, calm, peaceful and happy. Brian stopped, waiting for him to speak or attack, but the man just stood for a long time. Then without warning he moved. The fight was... brutal, harder than any of the others had been by far. They punched, grappled, kicked and pulled hair. Hobbs wasn't faster than Brian, or even stronger, not by too much at least. Fresher, but not using superior physical abilities on the level the others had. But he clearly handed Brian his behind on a platter. They fought this way for hours, neither giving ground, but the strange man scoring again and again on Brian, no matter how hard he tried to fight. It took a while, but Hobbs finally nodded and dashed in quickly, a simple fist to the back of the neck took Brian to his knees. After that the world went dark, even as Brian kept trying to fight.

When he came to Brian found himself in medical looking up at the ceiling. No one was there, so he went back to sleep. When he woke up Doctor Clinton came in to the room, meaning it would be night, unless the shifts had changed or something.

"Brian. How do you feel?" The doctor seemed friendlier than he'd seen him before, like he actually cared about the state of his patient. Maybe the knowledge that Brian wasn't a secret drug fiend had actually helped?

"Um, not bad. A little sore, but that's to be expected. Headache, but also to be expected. Nothing out of the ordinary."

It turned out that he'd slept for over a day and had to be given intravenous fluids to correct the fairly severe dehydration he'd worked himself into. Clinton vacated the room after a bit, once he made sure Brian wasn't feeling too bad. About half an hour later Doctor Tull came in, sat by his bed and started asking him questions.

Things that made sense in a way, but didn't seem important. Was he suicidal? No, but really, what did that matter? Did he want to see anyone in particular? He almost said no, but then decided he would.

"Karen, team three and the Chambers family if they'll come." Tull wrote this all down and left.

He slept some more and finally got up when Kern came in. His back felt stiff from sleep and his limbs were heavy from disuse. On the good side about half the bruising had gone away, so he looked a little less like a plum. He told Kern he was headed back to his room, but didn't ask permission, figuring the guy would tell him if he had to stay for medical reasons. Kern just called out to remind him to eat.

Brian went to his room, thinking about how he should be able to save Melany. Nothing came to mind at all still. He just felt so hopeless there.

A knock came at the door. He moved to answer it, hoping it would be good news of some sort.

"It's Marcia, open up or at least tell me you aren't decent if you don't want me to come in." Brian opened it for her and she took him into her arms, holding him for a second. It was a strange move and made him tense.

"The situation in Canada has changed. The creatures have found the lake and surrounded it. The Canadians are planning to use bombs on the whole are, about ten of them. Huge ones... The Director wanted me to come get you..."

Brian followed her as fast as they could go up the stairs. The elevators needed the top two levels to work right, so until those were finished, everyone had to use the stairs for everything. They ran, taking two and three steps at a time. Marcia swung through the door, grabbing on to the molding as she pushed on the bar of the heavy blue door leading into floor three. They kept running, right into a large office, with a single huge table, a war room of sorts.

Brian listened at first trying to figure out what the plan from the Canadians might be. It didn't take long, since Moore summed it up for him, looking sad and tired.

"The Canadians are taking out the whole area with fuel air bombs... Each one is about as powerful as a small nuclear device, so it should work to remove the threat... We, uh, have the young lady, Melany Miller, on the phone with the Prime Minister of Canada on conference."

Marcia pulled a chair over as his legs collapsed, making a loud thump when he hit the seat. The voices became clear to him a deep, sad sounding male voice came over the phone talking to someone.

"Melany, is... is there anything I can do for you? Anyone you need contacted or want done... after?"

The room went silent, the only sounds those of people subtly rustling and a single clock ticking away on the wall, reminding them all of how little time they had left before this happened. When he swallowed the sound felt like it would deafen him. Finally a tiny voice came from another speaker.

"Yes... Tell the people that have been helping me, that man that kept saving me - Brian - tell him I said thank you? He's done so much for me. Let him know I didn't give up..." A sob took her voice, the tears obvious.

"Will it hurt?" She said almost too softly for Brian to hear.

Marcia leaned forward, still standing, so that her voice could reach the speaker on the phone without shouting.

"Melany? This is Marcia Turner, I have Brian here... He heard what you said. He knows... It won't hurt. Not at all. The whole thing will happen too fast for you to be able to perceive pain from it. If you have to die it's one of the better ways to go."

Half the people in the room glared at her for being insensitive, but the little voice on the other end of the line didn't sound unhappy about what she'd said at all.

"Oh... that makes sense. Good. I don't want to hurt."

Brian stood.

"No. Call it off. I'll go... I'll take her place or... I can get there in about a day, twelve hours. I'll kill them all, she doesn't have to die. There has to be another way..." His voice shook with fear and rage.

The girl on the phone sobbed into a laugh, it sounded wracked with pain and sorrow, her voice came after a minute sounding stronger, older suddenly, as if she'd made up her mind about something.

"Is that Brian?"

The Director leaned in and told her it was.