They moved into the living room area, Max still doubtful, and a little shellshocked, as she took a seat on the leather couch. Logan sat next to her, very close, and she fought the urge to scoot away from him — maintaining distance was a habit now.
Carr took a seat in one of the chairs facing them. “As I said, I did the blood test and there’s no sign of the virus.”
She looked from Carr to Logan, whose own grin had turned lopsided, too — he seemed almost embarrassed, for some reason.
“Do we need to take Logan to a facility,” she asked, “and check again?”
The doctor’s eyebrows lifted. “You mean, do we need a second opinion? We asked ourselves that, but this is a simple procedure. We didn’t need an opinion — we needed an explanation.”
“So you went to the laptop. And?”
Logan jumped in. “Actually, first we discussed it a while — we couldn’t just do this randomly. We had to start with a theory, or theories, and work from there. The only thing I could come up with involves Kelpy.”
She frowned. “What could he have to do with it? All Kelpy proved is how virulent this thing is! We saw how quickly, how... horribly, he—”
Logan silenced her with a raised palm. “Think for a moment, Max — the only significant event relating to the virus, in all these months, has been Kelpy’s contact with me, and with you. His death, when he ‘became’ me, and died accordingly, is the only change in circumstance.”
She mulled that. “We had been careful, for a long, long time.”
“Yes,” Logan said. “You and I have been extremely careful since my last exposure.”
“Until tonight, anyway.”
“And what happened tonight?”
“We touched — my hair blew in your face, and...”
“And what?”
“And... nothing, so far.”
“Yes. And I began to ask myself — had Kelpy somehow died in my place? When he took on my physicality, he obviously became subject to the virus... otherwise, he wouldn’t have died.”
Nodding, she said, “You passed that capacity to Kelpy, Logan — but I passed the virus to him!”
“Yes. Now stay with me... I hacked into Manticore records and learned more about Kelpy. Seems when he ‘blended,’ some of the changes took place on a genetic level, as well.”
Again Max frowned in thought. “A kind of biochemical morphing?”
Carr picked up the thread. “In a manner of speaking,” the doctor said. “It wasn’t true morphing — he stopped short of that, most of the changes physiological but not genetic. He essentially assumed the shell of whoever he was trying to blend in with.”
“All of which means what?” Max asked.
Logan said, “That enough of his changes were genetic to fool the virus.”
Slowly, as if repeating a child’s ridiculous assertion, Max said, “Fool... the... virus?”
“Yeah. The virus thought Kelpy was me.”
“The virus... thought...?”
Carr said, “That’s just a convenient way of expressing the concept that this virus was ‘programmed’ to kill Logan. It recognized Kelpy as Logan and that’s why the virus attacked him. When its target was dead, it became inert.”
“Is that even possible?”
“Very much so,” Carr said with an assertive nod. “The scientists at Manticore were operating on the highest levels of genetic engineering... but I guess I don’t have to tell you that.”
“No,” Max said dryly.
“The irony is, two of their creations — one of which was designed to take you down, Max — collided, and inadvertently destroyed each other... and saved you and Logan from what we now know would have been an inevitable tragedy.”
“Even with all our precautions,” Logan said, “we were kidding each other that we’d never touch... but we couldn’t stay apart, could we?”
She just looked at him.
Logan reached out to put his arm around her. She jumped up, away from him.
“This is whack,” she said. “Doctor, tell him not to touch me — we can’t be sure, we can’t know...”
Carr said, “Logan, she’s right. We need—”
But Logan was on his feet, clearly irritated. “Damnit, Max — sometimes the news is good... It’s over. That goddamned virus is out of our lives.”
Max looked past Logan at Carr. She felt irritated, too — though she knew she should be happy. Wasn’t this the news they had been waiting over a year to hear?
“Dr. Carr,” she said evenly, “I want to believe it, but I can’t. I’m afraid that this thing will come back, that this... this remission is just a fluke. You said I was right to be careful. What do we need to do to make sure?”
Logan, frustrated, turned to Carr and said, “You agree, Sam, that—”
Carr patted the air. “Logan, Max is skeptical and she’s cautious — traits that have served her well.” Now the doctor spoke to Max: “We’ll do a blood test on you, and then we’ll have an answer.”
“A definitive answer?” she asked.
Logan was shaking his head. “My God, Max — you can see the dark cloud in every silver lining.”
“Very little is definitive in this world, Max,” the doctor said. “Particularly in this post-Pulse world... Now, if the virus is still inside you, it might be inert or it might merely be dormant.”
Hands on hips, she asked, “And your little black blood-test box can tell us?”
“Yes.”
She shrugged. “Then let’s do it.”
“Bedroom,” Carr said, gesturing.
Moments later, Logan and Max sat on the bed, somewhat apart, as Carr went to work. First, he swabbed her arm with alcohol, then with a needle removed a few CCs of blood. He gave her another swab to press against the wound.
“Take just a minute,” he said reassuringly.
He inserted the needle into a rubberized receptacle in his black box and pumped in the blood. Carr’s fingers expertly touched various buttons on the front of the box, and then paused, as if he’d dialed a cell phone and was waiting for a response. Carr studied the box’s small LCD screen, then he pushed another button.
“I’m printing a readout,” the doctor said. “I know you like things in black and white, Max...”
A moment later a slip of paper, like a gas station receipt, came rolling out the bottom of the box. Carr tore it off and handed it to Max. Down the left side were abbreviations, down the right side numbers. She read the list but it meant nothing to her. She held it up, her eyebrows rising in question.
“See any zeroes?” Carr asked.
She looked at the list again. “Yeah. Fourth one down.”
“What’s it say in the left column?”
“V.I.”
“Viruses,” Carr said. “V.I. stands for viruses... and you’re reading zero. You don’t even have a mild flu bug, Max.”
“I’m... clean.”
“The virus is out of your system.”
Max just sat there — she felt numb. It was as if Carr were suddenly three rooms away. “No virus?”
“Apparently Kelpy absorbed it out of your system. It’s possible his capacity to blend, to morph, went slightly haywire when, in his Logan phase, you and he touched and instinctively he began to take on some of your characteristics — suddenly the human chameleon was the carrier and the recipient.”
Logan said, “So, then... the virus killed Kelpy... and itself.”
Carr sighed, shrugged. “Without both of you entering into a lengthy research program at some top facility,” the doctor said, “we will likely never know for sure.”
Logan smiled. “Maybe it was magic.”
She turned to Logan, and he was grinning like an idiot; then she looked at Carr, and he wore a big smile, too.
“Really... gone?” she asked.