The Immortalist (39 page)

Niedermann gave no answer. Hauling himself up onto his knees, he felt at a four-inch scratch on the right side of his face. He whimpered as he stared at his fingertips, daubed with blood. “Oh, my God!” he moaned. “God, what have I done?”

Cricket didn't wait for him to get up. She ran across the lawn, toward the safety of the laboratories. Twice she called out for help, but no one was in sight. A look back: Niedermann was kneeling on the ground in the copse of trees—swaying back and forth, as if in prayer.

Something was in that pen. He was trying to kill me. Trying to fucking kill me.

Where to run? Beyond the labs was Wabanaki Cove. The town house. Hank was at Emmy's bedside. But at least she could phone for help from there.

She paused at the back entrance to Rensselaer. Gifford's own lab was on the top floor. But it wasn't Gifford she thought of. In her mind she saw Yolanda in her final agonies. Not one, but a thousand Yolandas. Children crying for their mothers. Husbands, wives, lovers, weeping. Gray-haired parents burying their children's children. Bodies burned. Bodies thrown into mass graves. Bodies abandoned to the rats and dogs because no one was left to bury them. She had seen such things before, in nameless villages in Africa. Now they loomed before her on a colossal scale. An entire civilization stood to be wiped out—an explosion of death, with Rockefeller Center as ground zero, set to go off in less than twenty-four hours.

As she fingered the ID badge clipped to her collar, she knew it would do no good to run. She had to strike back. And the weapon she needed was right there, in that little plastic rectangle.

She tapped the badge against the sensor of the back door. The light went from red to green. The badge still worked. Those lazy idiots in Security had never deactivated it.

She pulled open the door and looked up a long stairwell.

It was time to show Niedermann she could play rough, too.

Seven

CRICKET RUSHED UP
TWO FLIGHTS OF
stairs, then down a corridor to a windowless steel door guarded by a badge reader, a closed-circuit TV camera, and a sign with three-inch, red letters:
RESTRICTED ENTRY
. A single tap of her ID badge triggered a click of the electronic dead bolt.

Beyond the door was the changing room. Cricket hastily zipped on one of the yellow, hooded jumpsuits and donned a face mask and gloves before pausing at the outer air-lock door. In front of her was a sternly worded sign:

BIOLOGICAL PRODUCTION LABORATORY

CLEAN ROOM

PROTECTIVE CLOTHING REQUIRED

NO FOOD • NO DRINK • NO SMOKING • NO COSMETICS

She moved quickly through the double doors of the air lock and felt a slight gust of air as she entered the positive-pressure environment designed to keep out dust. A dozen technicians in jumpsuits and face masks were working around the room. Against the far wall was a row of gleaming hundred-gallon, chrome incubation vats. Nearer at hand were several glass-encased tissue-culture hoods and an array of high-performance liquid chromatographs for purification.

No one spoke to her. As long as she didn't look lost, she knew no one would notice her.

She knew where to go. With her usual quick strides, she advanced to the door of the cold-storage room. She took a deep breath before tapping her badge against the scanner and was astonished to see the light turn green.
Good thing it can't read my mind.

Inside, it was cold as February. She felt her hand shiver as she opened the glass door of the upright freezer. Gifford had told her the Methuselah Vector stocks were stored here.
Where?
She saw a solid metal box welded to the bottom of the freezer. That had to be it. Instinctively, she reached for the keypad of the lid lock, then stopped herself.
Who set the combination?
If it was Niedermann, she was out of luck. But it couldn't have been Niedermann. Charles would never have entrusted the Methuselah Vector to anyone else in the world.

She punched six digits—Doreen's birth date. The lid popped open.

Inside the box, marvelous in its simplicity, was a small styrofoam tray filled with ten rows of ten plastic tubes—a hundred in all. On its front, someone had neatly written with a Sharpie pen:

VECTOR aet791homosapiens/“METHUSELAH”

Batches 23–27, 32, 39–45, 48

STERILE

CERTIFIED PURITY

Aliquoted by human clinical dose: 0.8–1.2 nanograms in 1 cc saline

Here was the hope of millions, death's scourge, the fulfillment of thousand-year-old dreams.

Here were the seeds of a hundred plagues, the suicide of an entire species.

Either way, it was immense power. Cricket was awestruck as she lifted the almost weightless tray from the shelf. It seemed a sacrilege to touch it.

But she had worse than sacrilege on her mind. Grabbing the tray, she rushed outside to the nearest bench, to a black microwave oven. She opened it. The tray and its hundred plastic tubes fit easily inside. She shut the door. Her fingers turned the timer dial all the way up and set the power on
HIGH
.

“What are you doing there?” called a shrill woman's voice behind her.

“I won't be but a minute,” said Cricket without turning around. A quick jab of the
START
button, and the oven began to hum.

“What is that? Who are you?” As the small, gray-haired woman pushed forward to peer through the oven window, a look of horror came over her. “
No-o-o!
Stop that!” she cried, reaching for the shut-off switch.

Cricket pushed her away from the bench.

“Help!” shouted the woman. “Call Security! Call Dr. Gifford!”

They began to wrestle. Cricket sensed a crowd gathering. The woman's horn-rimmed glasses knocked against Cricket's face and fell to the floor. Cricket fought to keep the woman at arm's length, away from the microwave. The woman grunted and huffed, but was too enraged to speak. She dug her fingernails into Cricket's arms, tearing little holes in her paper gown. Minutes went by. Confused by the struggle, no one dared to intervene. No one took note of the fateful droning of the microwave.

Then the oven timer dinged. Cricket let go. A ring of hostile eyes surrounded her. She heard murmurs as the techs jostled to get a look at what was in the microwave.

Then everyone froze. The air-lock door slid open and a man in a dark gray suit strode forward. Gifford had come in with such haste that he hadn't donned a jumpsuit. “What's going on?” His eyes opened wide as he pushed through the crowd and saw who stood at its center. “Cricket!” he gasped.

“She put something in the microwave,” said the gray-haired woman.

Gifford opened the oven door. The hundred vials had turned into a steaming pile of plastic goo. “What was this?”

Then he read what was left of the neat black label:

CTOR aet7 osapie METH

He took a wobbly step back from the bench. “Oh, my God! Oh, God, no! No, Cricket! What have you done?”

“I've canceled the Lottery, Charles.”

“No! This is madness. No!” In a rage he seized the microwave and lifted it above his head, ripping its power cord out of the socket. With a grunt he slammed it against the laboratory bench, triggering an explosion of bottle glass and wood splinters that sent the crowd ducking for cover.

“Who let her in here?” he screamed.

Cricket faced him without flinching. Gifford's bloodshot eyes flared as he spotted her ID badge.

“You idiots! You goddamned, good-for-nothing idiots! Did no one think to cancel this badge? Oh, fuck! Oh, damn!” He took hold of the badge by its lanyard and tore it away. He threw it down in disgust and swept his arm across the countertop, hurling precision chromatographs and a vertical gel electrophoresis apparatus to the floor with a crash. He kicked at the broken glass plates until they were little more than dust.

“Call the police!” he shouted.

“Hancock County sheriff's on his way up,” said someone.

With fury in his eyes, Gifford glared at Cricket. “You . . . you know damned well what you've done here,” he hissed. “It takes weeks to make one batch of Vector. Two hundred thousand dollars in production costs for every dose. A hundred doses. Twenty million dollars. Twenty million fucking dollars.” He put his powerful hands around Cricket's neck. “Your career is finished. By the time I'm through with you, it'll be as though you never existed.”

Cricket could see a fine web of dark red capillaries running through the white, parchmentlike skin of his face. Small, purplish scalp blotches showed through his thinning gray hair—once so immaculate, now disheveled. “It's over, Charles. Give up and let me help you. You might still have a fighting chance against the virus. Certainly a better chance than Yolanda or Mr. Thieu. But only if you start treatment now. Come with me, Charles. Come to the BSL-4 lab.”

His eyes seemed to quiver in their sockets. She knew he could have crushed her larynx if he had wanted to. But just then came the squawk of a police radio. Gifford released his grip. Two tan-uniformed sheriff's deputies came through the air lock. In the lead was a slender thirty-year-old with a pointed chin and a knobby Adam's apple.

“I'm Deputy Sheriff Parkman,” he announced as he scanned the debris on the floor. “We got a call about an altercation.”

“Arrest this woman!” shouted Gifford. “I want her charged with malicious destruction of property. Twenty million dollars' worth. Put her in the deepest fucking hole you have and throw away the key. She's dangerous. No bail for her! Do you hear me? Tell Sheriff Samuels he can expect a phone call from Governor Starkie within the hour. No bail! No contact of any kind with the press! She's insane.”

Skeptically, Parkman eyed Cricket's diminutive frame and compared it to the wreckage on the bench and on the floor. “Ma'am, are you responsible for what happened here?”

“I am.”

“Then I
am
going to have to take you into custody.”

“No, you're going to take Dr. Gifford into custody.”

“Dr. Gifford? This gentleman here?”

Cricket reached under her yellow gown and extracted her CDC identification card. “My name is Sandra Rensselaer-Wright. I'm a medical officer with the Centers for Disease Control. Under Section 361 of the Public Health Service Act, 42 USC 264, I am ordering that Dr. Gifford be placed under mandatory quarantine. He's carrying a deadly and extremely contagious disease.”

Parkman turned to Gifford. “Is this true?”

“No. She's a mental case. She has no authority at all.”

“Look at him,” said Cricket. “Does he look well to you?”

Parkman took the ID and fanned it with his thumb.

“Call that number there,” said Cricket. “CDC headquarters. We'll straighten this out in five minutes.”

Gifford lurched forward. “Don't listen to her. She's admitted she's responsible for . . . for . . .
this
,” he shouted, waving his arm over the debris-strewn bench.

Parkman's hand edged toward his service pistol. “I need you to stand back, Doctor. Please, sir, move back while I make this call.”

“You can't be serious. Do you know who I am?”

“Yes, you're Charles Gifford, the Methuselah Vector doc. My partner Lasch and I have been detailed to security here all week.”

Parkman nodded to the other deputy, who began sidling toward Gifford.

Gifford stepped back.

Keeping Gifford in the corner of his eye, Parkman placed Cricket's card on the benchtop and began to key the number into his cell phone. “You do understand, Dr. Wright, that I still have to take you in?”

“No! Please, you can't do that! My daughter's here, and I need to look after her. She's very sick.”

“I'm sorry. There's a charge of vandalism. Hell, more than a charge. There's pretty obvious evidence.”

As a voice responded on the other end of the call, Parkman put the phone to his ear. Before he could get a word out, he was interrupted by a thud and a shout.

“Get him! The doc!” shouted Deputy Sheriff Lasch. He lay on the floor where Gifford had just thrown him. Broken glass crunched as he tried to roll onto his hands and knees.

Parkman dashed through the crowd. He was too late. For an instant, the back of Gifford's suit showed as a blur of gray in the air lock. Then, in the blink of an eye, he was gone.

Cricket helped Lasch to his feet, lifting him by his wrist to avoid a sliver of glass sticking out of his hand.

“Jeez!” said Lasch, gawking at the air lock. “Who the hell moves like that? He's faster than a goddamn greyhound.”

Eight