Contain (11 page)

“
Now watch.” She places the
slide back onto the stage. The destroyed serum is a debris field of
amorphous clumps, not a single intact red blood cell in sight. Only
the larger black blobs and smaller fragments remain. As I watch,
the blobs start to quiver, then move about.

I gasp and stumble backward against
the wall. “What the hell?”

“
Keep watching.”

A moment later, long, thin, spindly
appendages emerge from each orb and begin to wave about. Again, I
gasp in horror.

After a moment, their movements become
coordinated, purposeful. They begin to gather the destroyed cells,
teasing apart the clumps and reorganizing the pieces.

“
In about an hour,” Dad
says, “you'll have nothing but functional blood again.”

Doc Cavanaugh nods. “This is what's
happening inside of Eddie. Not just in his blood, but in his skin,
too. And, I believe, in his lungs, his eyes, his nose. Everywhere
there was damage.”

“
Whuh— What the hell are
those things? Where did they come from?”

I edge away from the scope and the
syringe full of blood, which she's still holding in her hand. I
keep expecting it to start oozing out and coating her fingers,
smothering her and everything as it expands. All at once, my skin
feels itchy. I scrape my hands over my arms, as if I'm covered in
bugs.

“
They look
like . . . spiders.”

“
Not spiders,” she says,
shaking her head. “But what exactly they
are . . . .” She shrugs. “They're clearly not
organic, or else they would have been destroyed by the
microwaves.”

Synthetic.
That was the word I'd heard Dad say when I was
standing outside the door.

“
You think they're
manmade?”

They both nod.

“
And you have no idea where
they came from? How long they've been inside of Eddie? How they got
there, or why?”

“
No. But we do know that
they were present two weeks ago when we first got the scope
converted. Eddie donated his own blood for a sample, but the image
quality was too poor. We thought the blobs were some sort of
artifact.”

“
Are they
infectious?”

“
We don't believe so.
They're not present on the surface of Eddie's skin, not in his
saliva or urine. They're too large to be airborne.” She glances at
my father, and he nods after a moment. “Not everyone here has
them.”

“
Who doesn't?”

“
We only know for sure one
person: Your friend Bix. I managed to get a sample from the bloody
tissue paper he discarded the other day up in the common room.
They're not in his blood.”

Dad steps forward to grab me as I feel
the floor tilt beneath my feet, but I swivel away, slamming my
thigh painfully into the corner of the bench. Something topples off
and smashes to the floor. “Don't touch me!” I yell. “Nobody touch
me!”

I don't want those things inside of
me.

Something tells me they already
are.

My head is spinning. Suddenly, the missing food stores and Jonah's
mutiny seem almost inconsequential by comparison. I need a moment
alone to gather my thoughts. But as I stumble away from the
doctor's office, Dad follows after me. He reaches for my arm, but I
swivel away before he can touch me.

Hannah watches us from the other end
of the hallway, curiosity written all over her face. Dad gestures
toward an empty room. I tell him no, but he insists, insisting that
I need to step up.

“
I can understand your
fear,” he says, after he's shut the door. “But you see my point
about starting a panic?”

I make fists and press them against my
temples.

“
You need to let me and the
doctor figure this out first, Finn. We don't know what it means,
whether these things are good or bad, where they came from, how
they got inside of us.”

“
Maybe this is some kind of
new disease.”

“
It's not a disease! It's
not organic!” He sighs. “If it'll make you feel any better, she can
check your blood.”

“
No! Nobody's coming near
me.”

I don't want to know. I
mean, a part of me already suspects they're inside of me.
Inside
all
of
us.

Except Bix.

Doing what they do.

Which is what,
exactly?

Maybe that’s why nobody ever gets sick
in this place. No colds or flus. No stomach ailments. Those things
are keeping us healthy.

So why am I so freaked out about them?
Why do I feel like throwing up?

“
The doctor and I concur
about the source,” he says. “We’re not sure, but we suspect it was
the shots at the evac center.”

“
They told us it was
vitamin D, because we wouldn't be able to get very much
sunlight.”

I remember how the aid workers
insisted the tiny capsule injected under the skin on our forearms
would keep us healthy. They lined us up and—

infected

—
injected us before
directing us to the sorting station where we were assigned a
bunker. There were ten different lines, and for just a moment I had
this overwhelming fear that they were going to separate me and Dad,
but they didn't. And everything was just so chaotic that we didn't
question the shot.

Both the tiny bump and scar have long
since disappeared. Did those things fix them, too?

I look at my hands, and I still have
the scars I got before coming here, the pale patch on my palm from
the spill Harper and I took at age eight, when we were riding
double on a bike that was much too big for us. The white spots on
my forearms from scratching them when I contracted chicken pox at
age eleven. The jagged scar on my wrist. The other on my forehead,
just above my right eyebrow.

But no new ones since coming
here.

“
I need to think.” I
gesture at the door and wait for him to move out of the
way.

“
Finn, I'm serious,” Dad
warns. “We can't have a panic starting in this place.”

“
Don't worry,” I grumble.
“I won't say anything.”

“
Thank you.” The tension on
his face and in his shoulders lessens. “Now, was there a reason you
were looking for me?”

And then it all rushes back. His face
clouds at the look on mine. “What is it?”

“
It's nothing.”

“
Finn, tell me. I can't
help you if you don't tell me.”

I shrug. “I think Jonah might be
behind Eddie’s accident.”

And the missing
food.

“
Why would you say
that?”

“
Stephen Largent told me he
thinks the broken steam pipe was intentionally cut.”

“
Why would Jonah do
that?”

“
Isn't it obvious? He wants
to make you look bad, like you've lost control.”

Something flickers in his eyes. “This
again? Finn, I keep telling you—”

“
They're going to vote
soon, Dad. They were going to wait till Eddie— till he died. But if
they find out he's getting better, I think it'll be much
sooner.”

“
It's okay.”

“
No, it's not, Dad! Not
when it's Jack Resnick trying to replace you!”

“
Jack's a good man. You may
not believe it, but he is concerned about everyone in
here.”

“
Really? He has a strange
way of showing it. He wants you to open the doors. And Jonah's
preparing people to defend themselves. If his dad gets those codes,
they're going to take a bunch of people and leave.”

Dad steps back, blinking as if I've
struck him. “He wouldn't do that, Finn, not unless he was
absolutely sure the Flense was completely gone. Jack may be
bullheaded, but he's not stupid.”

“
But Jonah is!” My voice is
getting louder, yet he doesn't try to quiet me. “He's positive the
Wraiths are gone, dead. And how are we even supposed to argue with
him? Nobody's seen one on the monitors in months!”

“
Absence of evidence of a
thing isn't evidence of absence, Finn.”

“
Not to you, maybe. Not to
reasonable people. But Jonah and Jack don't see it that
way!”

“
So, maybe it
is
time to
leave.”

“
No! It's not,
Dad!”

He shakes his head. “Listen to me,
Finn. Nobody's sabotaging anything. And maybe learning how to
defend yourself isn't such a bad idea. The day will come when we
have to leave this place. I don't think it'll be anytime soon, but
that's just my opinion.”

“
What if he throws us out
instead? What if he changes his mind and sends us out?”

“
I won't give up those
codes until I have every assurance that won't happen,
Finn.”

“
What if we run out of
food?”

“
We have enough for two or
three more years.”

“
No, we don't.”

This makes him pause. “What aren't you
telling me?”

I finally describe the shortages I’d
found in the storage room downstairs and the messed-up sandbags
upstairs, and the whole time the muscles in his cheek throb harder
and harder, and his face grows paler.

“
Bix and I redid the
calculations this morning. Based on past use, there's only enough
food left for another year.”

He still hasn't spoken. I wait. I need
him to come up with a plan. But he just stands there, like he's
blown a gasket. Finally, he blinks and says, “If someone is taking
food, then they have to be moving it to some other room inside the
complex.”

“
I can start looking for
it. Dad, did you hear me?”

He suddenly looks tired, gaunt, and I
immediately feel guilty for doing it to him, for bringing such bad
news at a time when there is so much else to worry
about.

“
Yes,” he says. “Okay,
fine. Start on Level Ten and work your way up.” He glances past me
at the door, his mind already miles away. “Skip Level Three. I'll
take the private quarters.”

I watch him step out, and I notice how
slumped his shoulders are. He turns and says in a quiet voice:
“Just you, Finn. Not a word to anyone else about what you're
looking for.”

“
Fine,” I answer. Then,
because he doesn’t move, I give him the assurance he's waiting for.
“Mum's the word.”

And I intend to keep my promise. I'll
show him I can step up, like he wants. I'll head down to Level Ten
and search every square inch of every room I can get into. I'll
note the rooms I don't have codes for on a piece of paper, and
follow up with him later.

But even as I set off, this feeling of
doom settles over me. Something tells me I won't find a single
grain of the missing rice, not one can of soup, and not one bag of
dried fruit.

Level Ten has always given me the creeps. Not Bren's kind of creeps
that keep her from coming down past Level Seven, but the kind that
makes me feel like I need a shower after I've been down here for a
while.