After Impact: After Impact Trilogy, Book 1 (9 page)

Later that night, Ilium and Avalon entered a huge room full of microscopes and lab equipment.

“Are we sure about this?” Ilium asked as they entered.

“Yes,” Avalon replied. She had mentally calculated the odds of being caught, and what to do if they were countless times. She was ready.

Ilium tried to distract himself from the carousel of ways they could get caught, what might happen to them if they were caught, and more. Ilium’s life was normally very planned and did not feature many adventures or anything dangerous. Life in the orphanage where he grew up was very scheduled, military like in its regimen.
What would my life have been like if I had grown up with a family?
He didn’t care if the family was poor or rich, or middle class. Young or old. All he wanted was special people to hug and laugh with and share memories with—to do things that weren’t set to a time limit. All of a sudden, with the addition of Avalon, spontaneity was quickly becoming his new best friend. Furthermore, he was feeling a connection which was more than friendship. His heart beat raced and warmth spread throughout his body whenever she was near or he heard the pleasant sound of her voice.

“Whoa. We have a huge comic book fan,” Avalon whispered as a section of wall was littered in various comic book pages. No one read comics on real dead trees anymore, and those pages would have been worth millions before they entered the habitat.

She found everything highly organized—pipettes, pipette tips, test tubes, were all neatly tucked away and labeled. Beakers, well plates, cylinders, Petri dishes all sat neatly upon the table top. Her fingers brushed against a bottle labeled Acetonitrile in one of the drawers.

It reminded Avalon of chemistry and biology labs in high school—of that one kid who almost set his face on fire by lighting methanol. Class was canceled the rest of the day. She headed home in the new electric car her parents had just bought her for her sixteenth birthday. It was top of the line and ran from solar energy. Sometimes she would set it in manual and drive it herself, but other times she liked to enjoy the autonomous feature while she closed her eyes and slept or read a magazine.

Ilium searched inside a side closet, but quickly closed it, having found nothing suspicious.

“It was just me and my dad against the world. We were a team,” Avalon added.

Ilium bristled as he had always wanted a family like that. A team. A unique and special connection with someone.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything,” Ilium whispered as his hands ran across the smooth walls searching for anything suspicious.

“We must continue to try. Something has to be here.” Ilium bumped the wallscreen.

“Hey! He hasn’t logged off yet!” Ilium whispered.

The feeling in the room immediately changed.

“He just made this so easy!” Avalon whispered.

“What’s this already on the screen?” Ilium asked.

A folder called Contingency plan displayed. Double tapping it Avalon read the following:

Harper Majors, age 18
. Received 10 ccs of serum. Survived radiation exposure level for 30 minutes. Convulsed and died 2 days later.

Annabelle Atkins, age 22.
Received 100 ccs of serum. Survived radiation exposure level for 60 minutes. Convulsed and died 4 days later.

Michelle Clue, age 20.
Received 1000 ccs of serum. Survived radiation exposure level for five days. Patient exhibited improved breathing capabilities in carbon dioxide rich environment and improved strength and speed for Days 2-4. Died of unknown causes on Day 5.

Avalon and Ilium’s faces glowed under the blue light from the hologram as they read the case files.

“What are we looking at?” Ilium asked in horror.

“They are Compatios. These are the ones that the rumors said were abducted.”

“Michelle!” Ilium said.

“It sure is,” Avalon said. “And all of these people are female.”

“But what, what was Viggo doing to them?” Ilium asked.

Avalon studied the screen a minute before answering. “It appears he was trying to build a race of radiation proof humans.”

“Unsuccessfully,” Ilium said, looking at the death count.

“My question is…why? This is unlike the man my father described and who occasionally came over to the house to discuss work.”

“Maybe he isn’t doing it willingly. Maybe he is doing it for someone else,” Ilium said.

Avalon shook her head. “His morals are too high for that.”

“Maybe his morals
used
to be too high for that.”

Avalon sighed. People changed. But still, she had to hold out hope that some things remained the same.

“I have a different problem,” Ilium whispered. “These charts show people are dying. So where is he hiding the bodies?”

Avalon’s eyes widened.

At that moment, Avalon gasped at the sound of footsteps approaching. Quickly, Avalon and Ilium turned off the lights and ran inside of the side closet. Ilium crouched in front of Avalon, protecting her. Avalon found herself grabbing hold of Ilium from behind and trying not to breathe too loud.

They listened as Viggo entered the room. Avalon’s heart thumped against her chest as she held her breath. Ilium placed one arm around her waist and held her tightly. Her eyes closed, and she began to think less about her fear of Viggo, and more about the slow rise and fall of Ilium’s chest.

Viggo stood a few feet away from them, and only the flimsy door separated the two.
Did I return everything to its place? Does he suspect anything?

Avalon strained to listen by placing her ear to the door. Drawers opened and shut. Then her attention focused on how close she was to Ilium as they crouched together in the dark. It was a small closet. Her whole life was a series of being stuck in one box or another. But this box, here with Ilium, wasn’t so bad. Still, every time she listened to Viggo’s footsteps, her heart beat faster. Ilium wrapped his arms around her and held her close. A few funky smells wafted into the closet, but after a while, they heard the sound of Viggo leaving the lab again.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Ilium whispered “I am going to step outside.”

Avalon shook her head. “What if he only stepped out for a minute?”

“True. But we don’t know how long he will take. It’s a gamble.”

Although Ilium could not see Avalon’s face, he sensed her hesitation.

“I will crack the door open first,” he said.

“Ok,” Avalon said.

Ilium carefully cracked open the door. No signs of movement. He crawled out and remained crouched inside the lab. Once confirmed clear, Avalon followed him outside of the closet and into the main corridor.

Together outside of the lab, they stole away to her room without looking back.

“I can’t believe we got away with it!” Avalon said breathlessly once they were inside her room.

“I can’t believe we did it either,” Ilium said.

Avalon let out a puff of air. Ilium stepped towards Avalon, gazing into her brilliant eyes which still held onto innocence in a habitat which didn’t deserve her presence. Like a flower growing in a desert, she did not belong and required constant vigilance and protection, even if she did not realize it.

Ilium took another step towards her and held her gaze. With one arm, he pulled her close. Avalon closed her eyes and enjoyed the electricity which flowed between them until, without warning, Ilium took a step back. Avalon opened her eyes and looked at him. His cheeks were red.

“Now that we know that’s he’s experimenting on people, what do we plan to do with this information?” Ilium asked.

Avalon liked the sound of the word ‘we’ from his lips. It wasn’t the first time he had used the pronoun, but this time it seemed to hold more promise.

“We’ve got to find a cure,"

Ilium nodded his head in agreement before the two parted ways. Avalon collapsed to her bed with her clothes still on.

The next day Avalon entered the workstation and noticed one floor circle was unlit.

“Is Brody still sick?” Avalon asked.

“Yes,” Xin said.

Avalon immediately left and hiked down the long twisting corridor walking towards the infirmary.

This has to be more than the common cold for Brody to miss another day. For each day he misses, he receives fewer ration points for food. Ilium assured me it was just the cold.

As she entered the room, there were seven people lying in beds, and the stench of sickness hung like a thick cloud in the air. Avalon’s stomach churned as patients vomited and coughed.

Out of all the patients lying on their backs in the tiny metallic trolley beds, not a single Accipio was amongst them.

Ilium stood in the middle of the room, giving one of the patients water.

“How is Brody?” Avalon asked.

Ilium shook his head. “I am sorry Avalon. It turns out he does have the virus.”

Avalon did not allow tears to form. She was developing thicker skin by the day. Tears would not help this situation. Action had to be taken.

“How close are we to something? A fix?” Avalon asked.

His grip tightened around the stethoscope in his hands. “I have been working on a formula non-stop, but I can’t make it work. At this rate, it only delays the inevitable for a few days, but it is far from a cure.”

Avalon took a deep breath to clear her mind.
I came here to check on Brody.
She strode over to him. Large black bruises were underneath his eyes.

“Hey. How are you doing?” Avalon asked.

“Just beautiful,” Brody said with a cough and a half smile.

Avalon gently petted his sweat drenched hair and her voice cracks as she said, “You are strong. You are going to survive this. We all are.”

Brody nodded. “I don’t know what’s going on. We all got the universal shot so none of us should be sick.”

Avalon exchanged a look with Ilium. “Maybe the shot isn’t so universal,” she answered, too softly for him to hear.

Brody coughed. “Sure are a lot of us here. Nobody dies from this right? After a day or two I am going to get better?”

His chest rose and fell with great effort.

“Get some rest,” she said, ignoring his question as he began to fall asleep from the medicines entering his IV.

Avalon plodded back over to Ilium.

“Do you think we should tell him the truth of his prognosis?” she asked.

Ilium shook his head. “We can’t. We can’t do anything but work on the cure.”

“Isn’t that inconsiderate? He has a right to know that he may die,” Avalon replied.

“Why? If he is going to die, what good does it do to tell him?” Ilium countered.

Avalon conceded he had a point after a long beat of silence. The decision still left her feeling uneasy.

Ilium handed her a microchip. “Maybe you can play with the formula?”

“I don’t know anything about biology. I am into computer science.”

“Just try for me. You recognize patterns. Perhaps you can see something I don’t see.”

Avalon nodded her head as she placed the microchip in her shirt pocket and returned to work.

Avalon inserted the microchip Ilium gave her into a small slot in her bed capsule later that night. She began toying with the computer model determined to figure something out. She could not let Brody die like that.

A couple of hours passed as the computer worked and she began to groan as her neck became stiff. Moving her head from side to side, she also rolled her shoulders back. Her chamber filled with a song from her playlist that reminded her of Ilium. A smile formed across her lips as she remembered the sound of his voice and how excited he became every time he learned something new.

Her head bobbed and her eyelids fluttered. This proved much harder to solve than she anticipated, and she finally succumbed to sleep.

A young man entered her dorm room. No he didn’t enter. He just appeared in the middle of the room. Avalon sat up and dropped down to the floor from her bed.