Mercy 6

Claiborne closed his eyes, clenched his jaw.

“I needed to see a specialist. Then I followed the sirens.” One truth, one lie. “At the site. Where the five fell. I saw others who looked struck. Like Cabral.”

“You brought one?”

“Her name is Julia. I have her down here. Oxygen and fluids.

Stabilizing. Awake. Alive. I believe she’ll make it.”

He blinked, tightened his lips, chewed thoughts.

“Look, Claiborne. You need to wake up. Thorpe’s sending you crap. You know that. He’s giving you the lab work but not the context. He doesn’t need to give any of us the context. Because the context was predetermined a long time ago. Everyone’s blind to anything outside it, especially him. Anything outside virus. But not you. You saw. You drew it. You know. It’s trauma. It’s ballistic. Those five fell at once. I saw. They came right to me.”

“You’re insane.”

“The woman I went to traces the path. She sent me to a bar right near where the others were struck. She predicted it. Government people followed me there. They know there’s something to my diagnosis.”

“She sent you? How?”

“She has mapped it all. That’s one thing she does. She sent me to the thickest part.”

“Thickest part of what?”

“This.” She jerked her arms outward, opened her hands.

“This city.”

Claiborne’s eyes lulled.

“You’re searching for a virus,” she said. “You see its work and its aftermath. You can’t find it. You operate under the premise that it exists, that it reproduces, that it spreads vertically, fast, synchronized, then hides. You consider nothing else.” She moved in close and pointed at his brow. “Nothing else. That’s insane.”

She looked at her pointed fist, pulled it back. Claiborne eyed her fingers, her lips. She tried to hide any tremor but felt a bundle of pathologies. He seemed unconvinced.

“I went out and found something,” she said, close to a whisper.

“Something that threatens Thorpe and the wider stratagem.”

“So what’s he do with you?”

“They will isolate me, Claiborne. They will silence me.”

“I’m not so sure that would be a bad thing. For you or them.”

She took a tight breath. She wanted to join him fully to her sense of danger, threat.

“Tell me. Where’s Pao Pao?” Her lips were thick and dry.

Quarantine. She had to think it before she could let herself hear it.

“Quarantine.”

If she let herself imagine this, she would break. She thought of pacing him on the trail, pushing a challenge. “And Silva, too, right?

Although my guess is she was too quick and less trusting. My guess she’s moving around, mostly down here but cut off from you.”

“She’s left a note or two.”

“And Mullich,” she said. “Mullich you can’t figure.”

“Sometimes,” replied Claiborne. “Sometimes he’s here.” He motioned to the room. “Sometimes he disappears. Sometimes—”

Claiborne lowered a shoulder. “He got you out. Didn’t he?”

“He showed me a way. I got myself out.” She pointed back to the lab door. “Julia. I had to bring her in. None of the EMTs were going to take her. Were even going to consider her. She’s here. With maybe a chance. That’s what I have to give her. So go. You should just go.”

“I can’t go.”

She grabbed a nearby glove box and threw it across the lab. She searched for something heavier. “You Path people. Down here in your holy basement. Why are you the only one down here? The others ran. Whoever was on shift down here with you. Tehmul ran on me when he got the chance. Who ran on you? Gonzales?

Stuart? Both? Thorpe left a long time ago. Dmir came in. Disease Control came in.”

“And it spread. Out there. And it went where you were.”

Mendenhall shook her head, bit her lip. “It struck. In a line predicted by a specialist. A specialist like us. It traveled vertically in a packed hotel, like this place. It presented itself in the thickest crowds. Like outside that bar.”

“That shows virus.”

“They all fell in the same second.”

“Then they were all exposed in the same second, and the virus has a precise incubation.”

“Despite different metabolisms, different immune systems, different diets, different life paths?”

“Virus works.”

“It will always work. We say, ‘Go viral. It went viral.’ What the hell does that mean? It’s just how we see things. It’s lazy and inaccurate. It’s handy. Common. And powerful.”

“You honestly think Thorpe and DC are disregarding evidence?”

“Even manipulating it. Forced observation. It’s willful misinformation designed to gain power and control. The stratagem.”

“And yours? You breach containment. Go into the public sphere.

Bring someone in?”

“If you thought I was wrong, we wouldn’t be standing here.”

“I’m barely standing here.”

“So go,” she told him again. “Use whatever passageway you have down here. Go be with your wife. Take her to the park. Raise a glass to me.” The light was gray; air vents purred. “Raise a glass to me.”