Thirst No. 4 (41 page)

His touch turns to a gentle caress. “I’m proud of you,” he says.

I open my eyes. “Matt?”

“Everything you’ve done so far . . . I would never have had the courage. That includes what you did to my mother.”

I swallow. “If there had been any other way.”

“There wasn’t.” He takes back his hand and stands at attention. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“Have all the adults been inoculated?”

“Charlie says we have a hundred percent containment of the virus when it comes to the adults.”

“We have to isolate the kids in the bottom level of the basement.”

“Those in the Lens or all of them?”

The question and answer to that will haunt the rest of my life.

“All of them,” I say. “First isolate the kids and then enlist the help of IIC security and start moving the adults out fast. Lie if you have to. Say the vaccine isn’t working the way we expected on the children and we have to quarantine them more carefully.”

“Keeping IIC security in line will be difficult.”

“It’s why you’re here. It’s a job only you can do. I’ll get Seymour and Charlie and we’ll meet outside. Oh, where’s Shanti?”

“I assume she’s where you left her.”

“I put her in an empty room above the Cradle. She’s probably still there. I’ll get her.”

“What about Cynthia Brutran and her husband?”

“Order them out of the building.”

“Their daughter is one of those who’s going to get sick. I don’t care how evil Cindy is, she’s not going to leave Jolie. Not without a fight.”

“I’ll take care of Brutran. The key is to move fast.”

Matt fiddles with the Telar grenade pinned to his chest. “I understand what has to be done.” He leans over and gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “You didn’t have a choice.”

“How can you be so understanding?”

“I don’t have a choice.”

Matt tells me about a van he’s placed outside the main
entrance and gives me several sets of keys. He explains about the vehicle’s cell phones and hidden weapons. But I know he has something up his sleeve he’s not telling me about.

I run toward the isolated room where I left Shanti but bump into her in the elevator. She was on her way to see me. Her eyes are big and red and I can see she’s been crying. She hugs me when we meet.

“Did it work?” she asks.

“It worked.”

“Is Umara okay?”

“She didn’t make it.”

“What happened?”

“I don’t have time to explain. I need you to get to a black van that’s parked out front.” I hand her a set of keys. “Wait there until I arrive. I won’t be long.” I turn to leave.

“Wait! Sita, there’s something wrong with the vaccine. The kids are coming out of the session. I saw their hands and legs. They’ve got worse blisters than Seymour and I had. They’re real sick.”

“Trust me, I’ll handle it. Right now I need you to get to the van.”

“Is Seymour coming?”

“I’ll get him. Now go!”

Unfortunately, it’s the Brutrans I run into next, not Seymour and Charlie. We meet in a stairway between the basement floors. Tom and Cindy are both armed and have half a
dozen guards with them. They plant themselves firmly in my way. But they’re below me, I have the high ground, and that makes a bigger difference than they realize.

Cindy and Tom have semiautomatic handguns. They don’t point them at me but they don’t exactly avoid me either. They look tired and desperate.

“Where are you going?” Cindy demands.

“To the basement to get Charlie and Seymour.”

“They’re there but I’ve placed them under guard.”

“Why?”

“This is still our building,” Cindy says. “I’ve been monitoring you the last ten minutes. You’re gathering your friends and preparing to leave. In all this time, you haven’t stopped to call me. I haven’t been debriefed.”

“You want a debriefing, I’ll give you one. The Source has been wiped out. Our business is finished. My people and I are getting out of here. Do you have a problem with that?”

“You’re damn right we do,” Tom says. “You’re leaving behind hundreds of sick kids, and as far as we can tell, no cure. One of those kids is our daughter.”

I pause. “Has Jolie begun to show symptoms?”

Cindy nods. “Many are sick. I moved Jolie to our clinic and sedated her to decrease her pain. But Matt has managed to collect all the vaccine. We’re not sure how. We only know we can’t find any. Even Charlie is out.”

Matt is strong and capable of making his own decisions.
While I was traveling through the underworld, he must have guessed my general plan and taken control of the vaccine.

“Release Seymour and Charlie and I’ll see what I can do about getting more vaccine.”

“No,” Tom says. “They’re the only insurance we have.”

“In other words, we don’t trust you,” Cindy says.

“I just destroyed the Telar. That’s why we decided to work together, isn’t it? I have also inoculated the bulk of your people against a potentially fatal virus. From my perspective, I’ve upheld my end of the bargain. Now, in return, you put a gun in my face and tell me my friends are hostages.”

Tom sweats over the trigger on his gun. “Give us the vaccine for the children and you and your friends will be free to go.”

“Those kids are assassins. They can strike the mind of anyone in the world. I can’t just leave them here in your hands. They’re too powerful.”

Tom frowns. “Are you saying you’re going to kill them?”

I turn to Cindy. “How should I answer that?”

Cindy studies me and suddenly the light dawns inside.

“You want me to decide,” she gasps.

I shrug. “I’m not Jolie’s mother.”

“But you care for her,” Cindy says.

“You can give the children the vaccine on one condition. You’ve got to separate them. You’ve got to spread them across the globe and make sure they have no contact with each other.
You have the resources to do this. But if you deviate from this rule, I’ll hunt them down and kill them. After I kill you.” I pause. “That’s my deal. Take it or leave it.”

Tom’s trigger finger shakes with anger. “You’re in no position to dictate what direction our firm must take. Especially when it comes to our children.”

“They’re not your children. They’re no longer under your control.”

Tom is ready to explode. “What are you talking about?”

“Ask your wife.” I turn to her. “Cindy?”

She points her gun between my eyes. Her arm is steady but her gaze is distant. It is not an easy decision to make, and I sympathize. That’s why I’m dumping it in her lap. Jolie is a monster and she’s a little girl. She is both and she is what they made her to be.

Cindy doesn’t answer. But she pulls back the hammer on her gun.

Her husband stares at her in wide-eyed amazement. “Cindy?”

“I’m thinking,” she whispers.

“About what?”

“Love.”

Tom snorts. “Don’t fall to pieces on me right now. I need you. Jolie needs you. We have to secure a supply of that vaccine. Until we do, we’ll always be at the mercy of this witch.”

“The effects of the last vaccine we gave you are permanent,” I say.

He glares at me. “Like we trust you.”

I don’t respond. His remark is irrelevant. His wife is in charge. I have given her more authority than I ever imagined I would. She continues to stare at me, her gun held ready. Even if she pulls the trigger, she’ll miss. All of them combined are no match for me.

“Tom,” Cindy says quietly.

“What?”

“Shut up.”

His handsome face swells with blood and his gun trembles. “Jolie’s life is in jeopardy! If you think you can choose this time to talk to me like that, then you—”

Cynthia Brutran shoots her husband in the forehead. Her handgun is a .45; it has heavy stopping power. A spray of bloody brains explodes out the back of his skull and paints the stairway wall. His body drops and rolls down a flight of stairs. It comes to a halt in a pool of blood, his eyes wide open, staring at nothing.

The IIC guards come to full alert. The stakes of our confrontation have risen. Cindy turns the gun back on me. “I’ve come to a decision.”

“I can see that,” I say.

“I leave here with you and Jolie. You find the real vaccine and give her a shot. Her symptoms better fade in a few minutes.”

“Why follow us? What’s your purpose?”

“You know our business is far from over.”

She refers to the game, CII, Cosmic Intuitive Illusion, and whatever else the kids have programmed onto the Internet.

“Release Seymour and Charlie,” I say.

“Agreed.”

“What do you want me to do with the rest of the children?”

“You made them sick. You decide.”

She tries to throw the responsibility back at me.

“Call your guards and tell them to let Seymour and Charlie go,” I say. “Get your daughter. I’ll meet you outside the main entrance in a few minutes.”

She taps my forehead with the tip of her gun. “Sita?”

“Cindy?”

“No tricks.”

“Sure.” But I suspect it won’t be up to me.

W
e’re outside in the black Mercedes van that Matt has procured for us. This is Malibu, home of the world’s most famous celebrities. Armored vehicles can be rented at the last minute with a call and a credit card. The vehicle has three rows of seats. Matt climbs behind the wheel. I’m beside him in the passenger seat. Behind me are Cindy, Jolie, and Charlie. The Telar scientist has just given Jolie a shot of the C-1 vaccine and the child rests in her mother’s lap. She’s still groggy from the pain medication she received at the IIC clinic.

Shanti’s way in back, lying down, resting her head on Seymour’s lap. She doesn’t want to complain but it seems the last session sucked the life out of her. She has a pounding headache. Seymour tries to comfort her but at the same time he fumes.

Matt has started the van and is about to drive away.

Seymour wants to talk. Hell, he doesn’t want to leave.

“We’re abandoning a lot of sick children,” he says. “I don’t care who they are or what they’ve done in the past. They’re kids and they’re in pain.”

“Most of the adults have left the building,” Matt says. “There are only two doctors taking care of the sick. They know the kids can’t be exposed to the outside environment.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Seymour demands.

When Matt doesn’t respond I know exactly what it means.

Matt has rigged the place to blow with Telar weapons.

“What do you have to say, Cindy?” I ask.

The woman strokes her daughter’s head. “We’ve lost control of the Cradle, in more ways than one. We should start over fresh.”

“Let’s get out of here,” I say to Matt.

“Wait!” Seymour shouts. “This isn’t like you, Sita. We can save everyone. We can make this right.”

Matt glances at his watch as the van eases down the long driveway. “We have less than a minute to fix anything,” he mutters.

“Let me out, I’ll stay with them,” Seymour says, not understanding Matt. “If all I can do is help stop their pain, then so be it.”

Matt accelerates. We approach Pacific Coast Highway.

“Their pain will soon be over,” I promise him.

Seymour pounds the back window in frustration. “I’m serious, let me out,” he yells.

“Go right. Head north,” I tell Matt.

We turn onto the highway and roar north at eighty miles an hour.

“How come no one’s listening to me?” Seymour complains.

The explosion, when it comes, is much larger than I expect. Matt must have planted his Telar grenades throughout the structure. Fortunately, the building is surrounded by plenty of land. There’s no danger to any other homes or businesses.

Glancing back, it looks as if the top of the hill has been struck by an asteroid. The debris cloud is half earth, half glass. It glitters with red and green sparks from the exotic explosives. At its heart glows a fireball as hot as the surface of the sun. It’s hard to imagine a virus, no matter how deadly, surviving such a blast.

“Damn you all,” Seymour swears.

There’s nothing I can say. He’s right, I have damned us all.

The sound of sirens begins and yet quickly fades as we drive farther north. Disgusted with us, Seymour stops talking, while Shanti falls asleep in his arms. Cindy eases Jolie into her own seat and fastens her seat belt. The woman reaches for her laptop. Charlie stares out the window at the ocean. Matt drives. I close my eyes and try to forget I’m going to hell when I die.

We’re thirty minutes north of Malibu and about to turn inland when Cindy hits a key on her laptop and lets out a groan. “Oh no,” she says.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

“This is going to be hard to believe.”

“Nothing can surprise me at this point,” I say.

“Our pictures are on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.”

I whirl. “What are you talking about?”

Cindy turns her laptop screen toward me. I see my photograph, followed by Matt’s and Cindy’s. Seymour’s face is in a small row on the bottom of the page. According to the U.S. government, we’re the most dangerous criminals in the nation.

“But the building just blew up,” Matt says.

“No one paid any attention to us leaving,” I agree.

“This makes no sense. The FBI can’t work that fast,” Seymour says.

Cindy shakes her head. “We’re not on this list because the FBI saw us blow up IIC’s headquarters. Nor has anyone at IIC spoken to the FBI. This list was generated higher up the food chain. It was already in place and was just released now to make it difficult for us to travel.”

“How do you know?” I ask.

“Because it takes time to get the warrants from a judge that would put us on this list.”

“It must be the Telar,” Seymour says. “Sita and Umara took out the Source, but there are still thousands of them alive all over the globe. Some have got to be in positions of power. They’re probably angry.”

“I’ve checked with my Telar contacts,” Matt says. “The
group is in complete disarray. But one thing is definite—they’re delighted that Haru and his inner circle are dead.”

“Then who’s after us?” Seymour says.