The infinity cure, p.11
The Infinity Cure, page 11
“Nope,” Demonte said. “Not yet anyway.”
“Would you mind giving that to me? I’d like to look into this a little more.”
Demonte hesitated, then shrugged and handed it over. “Sure, I don’t plan on doing anything with it,” he said. “If I were you, I’d get that over to the FDA or CDC. Seems like Faith’s people are going a little rogue, and I don’t trust it.”
“Thanks, I’ll do that,” Brooks said, trying to hide his disbelief about how easy that had been. He pocketed the vial with caution, attempting to appear nonchalant about it. “Listen, I’m gonna keep trying to find out about those missing people. If you are too, we can help each other, share information.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Demonte said. “I’ll keep poking around, I guess. It’s probably nothing, but it’s hard to keep that nagging voice quiet when you’re a reporter.” He smiled.
Brooks shook his hand again and the man left in the direction of the bar. The agent kept a casual, friendly smile on his face until Demonte had disappeared into the drunken throng. Then he lifted his ring to his lips and called headquarters.
He didn’t bother with pleasantries. “The situation appears to have changed drastically,” he said. “I may need to take the extreme measure.” He explained briefly, then disconnected. He spotted a security staff member across the room and headed toward her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Demonte nursed a cognac as he made the rounds, talking to various guests. The mood of the room was joyful, almost bacchanalian.
No one seemed worried about the missing guests or concerned with the solemn reason behind the gathering; everyone was just enjoying the sumptuous refreshments and spectacular ocean views. The more sedate music of earlier in the evening had given way to upbeat electronic music and several clusters of partygoers around the room were laughing and dancing together.
People were more than happy to talk to Demonte, but keeping them focused was difficult, and when he did get them to answer his questions, they had no useful information. He felt at a loss as to where to go next. It was as if the missing guests had evaporated into thin air, along with anyone who knew them or had any connection to them.
He thought back over the exchange with the agent. He didn’t think he’d given away too much, and he was more than happy to blow the whistle on the dubious medical practices happening in the mansion. Maybe Brooks was being sincere about sharing information, but even if not, hopefully learning about Faith’s condition would turn his focus away from Louvin.
It couldn’t hurt to at least pretend to be working together, so Brooks wouldn’t suspect he’d had something to do with Louvin’s escape. If there was security footage of him visiting the cell, Brooks must not have reviewed it yet—otherwise he’d have detained Demonte immediately. As long as the guards who’d seen him stayed at the prison, no one should have reason to connect Demonte to the breakout.
He abandoned the futile questioning of guests and stood in a corner of the room, watching the revelers from a distance and slowly sipping his drink. The problem was, once he wasn’t doing anything that consumed all his attention, his thoughts turned to Hiroe. That didn’t do him any good at all.
Not only could he not help her with the horrible problem she had now, but he’d vowed to keep his distance from her in general—and had managed to stick to that for the better part of a decade. Now that he’d spent several hours with her, he remembered why. She intoxicated him, made him feel like putty in her hands. He struggled against that and ended up acting like an asshole to her. It wasn’t good for either of them.
She thought she was being subtle with Louvin, he was sure, but he could practically feel the chemistry between them. It had always been that way when they worked together, a parade of men in thrall to her. He hadn’t witnessed it firsthand in years, having chosen to leave and co-found Static in part to escape her unintentional hold on him. He wasn’t really surprised that in her fifties, she still had no trouble attracting men, and young handsome ones at that.
He tried not to resent her for it. She just didn’t feel that way about him—he’d never sensed any opening to reveal his feelings—and so he’d set them aside as long as he could, and then gone on to pursue a new life when it got to be too much.
When she’d withdrawn completely from him after he told her he was leaving, he realized once and for all that he’d only been a professional convenience for her. Once he didn’t represent opportunities for advancement anymore, Hiroe had dropped all pretense of being friends with him.
It was painful, but he was glad he’d found out and stopped clinging to the hope that beneath their camaraderie, she had deeper feelings for him similar to what he felt for her.
Now, seeing the beginnings of aquamycosis taking over her skin, it was even clearer that what he felt for her was much more than physical attraction. The thought of her being taken from the world was incomprehensible to him.
Something attracted his attention from the corner of his eye and took him out of his sad spiral of thoughts. He looked down. Louvin’s satchel was emitting a strange light between the cracks.
He unfastened the top and opened it. Bruno’s already garish yellow had become luminescent, glowing up at him. He looked around to make sure no one was watching. He wasn’t sure what it meant, so he was about to close the bag when he saw that it was also pulsing ever so slightly.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he muttered to it. He felt irritated having to take care of an entity he had no idea what to do with. He closed the bag and returned his gaze to the party.
He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he suddenly noticed an entirely different sensation in his brain from anything he’d felt before. It was as if someone was inside him, trying to get his attention. He couldn’t explain it to himself any other way.
He looked down at the bag again, and saw that part of Bruno was now protruding outside it. The glow had lessened, but he could see the shiny yellow clearly, touching his wrist. He jerked his hand away and immediately the strange feeling in his mind disappeared.
“Goddamn, Bruno,” he said, still feeling foolish for calling it a name. “What the hell were you trying to do to me?”
As if in response, the luminescence increased and decreased in a slow flashing pattern. Demonte reluctantly realized that if he really wanted to know what Bruno wanted, there was an easy way to find out.
Gritting his teeth, he unfastened the bag and placed his hand gingerly on the mass. “All right, buddy,” he said resignedly. “What’ve you got?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
He almost didn’t finish the sentence, so overwhelming was the vertigo of connecting mentally with a nonhuman—but incredibly complex—entity. Bruno quickly and efficiently imparted its message to Demonte, not in words or pictures but in knowledge.
It was worried—or the slime equivalent of worried—about Louvin and Hiroe. It explained how aquean siblings share a psychic bond, so it was more attuned to Villanna than it was to most people. It was able to read nuances of situations if it was in the same room as people, and with people it was bonded with—such as Louvin and, by extension, his sister—it was particularly sensitive.
And Villanna, Bruno sensed, was not being honest with any of them. It had been trying to tell Demonte since they’d left Louvin with her, but the slime’s strength had been sapped by everything it had done tonight, and it had taken time to rebuild it.
Together, Demonte and Bruno relived the moments with Villanna. Demonte was able to see the interaction from Bruno’s perspective, including the moments where it sensed deceit in Villanna’s words or behavior.
Every ounce of skepticism he’d had about Bruno disappeared as he explored the being’s complex awareness and understanding of things it witnessed. It kept zeroing in on a sense that Villanna’s link with Louvin had weakened while she was talking to him, as if she was holding something back from him.
“You think we should go check on them?” Demonte murmured aloud. Bruno thought so. “Can you see if they’re okay first, before we try and barge into a locked clinic?” It was as if Bruno had been waiting for him to ask. Demonte’s head swam as Bruno whisked his vision through walls and ocean—not even pretending to follow a route they could physically take—toward the clinic.
It homed in on Louvin and Hiroe. Bruno’s vision was vastly different from human sight, so it was difficult for Demonte to make out what was happening, but they appeared to be lying on beds or examining tables side by side. The sickness had spread, Bruno sensed, and they were unconscious—sedated or resting naturally it wasn’t sure.
They didn’t seem to have attendants, not in the room at least. Bruno expanded its search slowly, discovering humans and aqueans as it went, at work or on the move in the infirmary.
“Can you find Villanna?” Demonte said.
It continued its expansion into the clinic, entering a room with many beds or tables, side by side. Demonte clutched his head with his free hand. Bruno was channeling an energy into him that felt very much like distress, and it overwhelmed Demonte, putting him in a panicked state.
He dropped his drink, barely hearing the glass shatter, and hurried toward the door at a near run. His hand was still half submerged in the mass in the partly open bag. Party guests looked at him with dazed, drunken confusion as he pushed through them.
He stumbled several times, bumping into walls, nearly tripping, his equilibrium shot. His vision doubled in a nauseating, disorienting way—he saw what was in front of him, but layered over that in his mind’s eye, almost more vivid, was what Bruno was focused on.
It hadn’t found Villanna. It had stopped when it encountered the cause of its current horror. The room it had expanded into housed as many humans as there were beds. But something was wrong. Most of them appeared to be dead, and their bodies were indistinct. Whole limbs or even torsos, sometimes heads, seemed to be missing or malformed.
Demonte couldn’t tell if what Bruno was showing him was an actual representation of what was in the room, or an interpretation of the distress it felt. Either way, Demonte’s nerves were overloaded with the intensity of Bruno’s alarm.
Together they pounded through hallways and tunnels, Demonte panting and cursing the labyrinthine estate. At least there was no chance of getting lost; Demonte kept his hand on the yellow blob, and Bruno went off like an alarm in his head every time he even considered going in the wrong direction.
They reached the infirmary and Demonte stared at the door. “What now?” he asked, breathless from sprinting. “Should I try to knock?”
Bruno surfaced a suggestion. Demonte agreed with some reluctance. The slime around his hand thinned and molded itself to him. It didn’t go transparent as it had on Louvin during the jail break, but it conformed itself to his hand like a glove. Demonte raised his hand toward the keypad on the wall. The majority of Bruno stayed in the bag; a rope of matter kept it from splitting in two.
Demonte watched, fascinated, as his yellow-coated hand seemed to move of its own volition, slowly tapping out a code. The door slid open. Bruno smoothly retreated from Demonte’s hand and dropped back into the bag.
Demonte entered the room cautiously. It was bare and quiet. He opened another door, this one unlocked, and moved down the corridor it revealed, peering into door windows. He reached the end of the hall, one final door before him. There was no glass pane on this one. He touched it, and it slid open.
The moment it did, Hiroe, just on the other side of the door, practically fell into his arms. She struggled to get away, then realized it was him and collapsed with a sound of relief that was almost like a sob.
He stumbled back under her weight, and also in shock at her appearance. The fungus had spread to every part of her face and arms, a garish multicolored nightmare. If not for her familiar pageboy bob and the outfit she’d been wearing all night, he might not have recognized her at all. Her body felt as if she were wearing an uneven layer of padding under her clothes. But his dismay over her condition was soon overshadowed by what he saw beyond her.
“Lottie,” Hiroe said, her voice odd and muffled. She gestured to the closest bed, and Demonte felt a shock of recognition at the partial face, the lifeless single eye staring at him.
“Holy fuck,” he breathed. “What’s going on here?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Hiroe’s mouth worked, but before she could attempt to answer, they heard voices in the corridor. “Hide,” Hiroe said with effort.
Demonte looked around wildly, spotted a large cart full of unidentifiable devices on the far side of the room. He grabbed Hiroe’s arm, wincing with worry at the feel of the fungus furring it, and pulled her with him.
They crouched behind the table. Hiroe attempted to still her breath. She tried swallowing but it was as if her mouth were stuffed with cotton. Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy, and its surface was numb. Her disorientation had receded, replaced by horror as she became fully aware of her disease-stricken body.
“The serum should be just about ready,” a male voice said. “I’ll check the levels; we may have enough by now.”
A woman’s voice replied, indistinct and muffled. The man seemed to understand what she said. “We’ll have you undress and submerge in the liquid. These go in your nostrils to provide oxygen. It’s very important for you to be completely immersed so we can treat your scalp and face.”
Hiroe leaned against the table that provided their cover, wishing she could see what was happening.
Her eyes fell on Louvin’s satchel.
She fumbled it open and laid her hand on Bruno. Demonte saw what she was doing and touched Bruno cautiously himself.
The connection was slower to come this time but built steadily, Hiroe thought. Perhaps the delay had to do with aquamycosis, or because Bruno was exhausted.
Then, just as Bruno’s consciousness started to come into focus in her mind, Hiroe heard Demonte wonder if two people could communicate with Bruno at once. She looked in his eyes with a jolt, and they shared a silent moment of amazement. Somehow Bruno had given them access to one another’s minds as well.
Sharing with a human mind was very different from how it felt between her and Bruno. Demonte’s thoughts were almost like her own, instantly understandable, uncomfortably intimate and familiar. Staring at each other, knowing one another’s thoughts, was disorienting.
Helplessly, filled with dread, Demonte saw his admiration for Hiroe laid bare before her, and felt her surprise and puzzlement as keenly as they both felt his own excruciating embarrassment.
He was too overcome to think about breaking the connection with Bruno. For several moments that felt like an eternity, he and Hiroe were locked in a ricocheting series of emotions. But they had no time to dwell on it; their attention was drawn to the scene that Bruno was revealing.
At first they saw it in Bruno’s colorful, abstract way: a figure in a wheelchair, flanked by two others, one bent solicitously toward the seated one, the other adjusting controls on a large machine. But gradually, the combined efforts of their minds managed to translate and clarify what Bruno was showing them. It somehow started to resemble what human eyes would see.
The person in the chair came into sharper focus, and Demonte and Hiroe realized it wasn’t just Bruno’s vision creating the appearance of brilliant rainbow hues, but feathery rows of fungus, so thick it was difficult to comprehend someone was under it all.
The person’s hair was nearly gone, the skull coated almost as thoroughly as the face and arms. A few locks remained, growing here and there between patches of fungus. Though it looked tangled and limp, the long silver hair still shone.
“I think we’re ready, Mrs. Benedict,” said the attendant near the large rectangular object.
The other attendant touched a button on the arm of the wheelchair and it rolled forward. Bruno turned its attention to them and the features came clear, visible through the clear plastic front of her hazard suit hood. Villanna Interre.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Hiroe was shocked. Then taken aback by how little this revelation surprised Bruno or Demonte.
Louvin’s sister helped Faith to her feet. She unfastened her gown at the back and it floated to the ground. Demonte and Hiroe cringed at the sight of Faith’s disfigured body.
Villanna operated a crane-like device, rotating its arm until it was next to where Faith stood, wobbling as if she were about to fall over. A flexible seat dangled from the arm of the device. Villanna helped Faith sit on it and secured her with straps.
Faith slouched tiredly as the crane lifted her up, then over the tank the male attendant had been fiddling with, and began to lower her slowly into it.
Her two attendants seemed transfixed by the process, so Demonte risked peering out from their hiding place for a clearer look than Bruno’s vision could provide, his hand still pressed against the blob. Hiroe gasped as Demonte’s view and Bruno’s coalesced in her mind, giving her an almost more than lifelike vision of what was happening.
The tank was filled with a murky reddish liquid. Hiroe knew it was being fed from the trays where the bodies were being slowly dissolved. She wondered what happened to the liquefied remains as they passed through the machines before reaching the tank.
Faith didn’t flinch when her head dipped below the surface. She looked something like an exotic fish, the frills of fungus swaying gently with the liquid until the ripples stilled. Her face, an expressionless multicolored mask, didn’t move either. The bubbles emanating from her nostrils were the only indication she was alive.
Hiroe watched Villanna through Demonte’s and Bruno’s eyes with disbelief. The girl’s face was suffused with excitement as she stared almost reverently at the tank. If she was bothered at all by Faith’s appearance, or by the corpses around her, it didn’t show.
Just then Villana blinked and looked around, wide-eyed. “What’s wrong?” the other doctor asked.
