I figured that I should probably be thankful I wasn’t marched into the quarantine center through the front door. Instead, when I was nudged out of the back of the van, I landed in what looked like an empty warehouse except for the stacked cots along the walls. I breathed against the pinch of Anna’s vest and tightened my ponytail.
A new jumpsuit awaited us, her face mask firmly in place. A one-woman welcoming committee. Her spiky gray hair didn’t move as she strode forward, tablet in hand. I saw my school photo on its screen.
“Delaney McEvoy?” The woman clearly knew she had the right girl, but she waited for my nod before continuing. “I’m Director Taryn Spurling. Head of Biohazard Defense.” She turned to the jumpsuit who’d brought me. “Did you get a sample?”
He handed her the vial of my blood and my dial.
“Is someone going to tell my father I’m here?” My voice came out higher than normal.
Above her face mask, Director Spurling’s laser-blue gaze sharpened. “You know where he is?”
“Visiting galleries in California. He’s an art dealer.”
She stiffened. “You’re going to have to do better than that, Delaney. A lot better. You see, I’ve got all the evidence I need. I can issue the order anytime to have your father shot on sight.”
Her words punched the air out of my lungs. “For what?”
“You’re not going to help him by lying.”
“But he is an art dealer,” I said helplessly.
“Yes, of course.” She spoke through a clenched jaw. “That’s where the big money is. But my sources tell me that Ian McEvoy will retrieve anything if the price is right.”
“Retrieve?” Understanding crawled out of the primordial mud of my mind, tiny and grasping. “You mean from the other side of the wall….”
“Now that look almost works. You almost have me believing that you don’t know” — Spurling leaned in until her face mask grazed my ear — “that your father is a fetch.”
I recoiled. “No. That’s not true.”
Under that mask, the woman was smirking, I was sure of it. Well, Director Spurling was wrong. Dead wrong. My father was no fetch. He wore bifocals and was lactose intolerant. Him, scale the Titan wall and sneak into the Feral Zone? Not possible. But the word fetch had triggered my memory of the last fetch they’d arrested. He’d been executed by a firing squad in front of the Titan. As always, our online classes were cancelled so that we could do the patriotic thing and watch the event in real time. The worst moment wasn’t when the bullets flung the man against the wall, as awful as that had been to see. It was earlier, when they’d forced a black hood over his head, making him face death in total darkness — alone. That seemed beyond cruel.
“Put her in a containment room.” Director Spurling’s thin voice dragged me back into the moment.
“You’re keeping me here?” I began to sweat, which plastered the vinyl vest to my skin.
Spurling didn’t spare me a glance, just headed for the door, tossing off a last order as she passed the jumpsuit. “Call me if she’s still alive in the morning.”
2
I paced the cold, white box of a room. I’d been stuck in there for just over an hour and already I was losing it. It was too much like a hospital room. Too much like where my mother had spent her last days. But Director Spurling could lock me up for months if she felt like it. The Biohazard Defense Department had the authority to do whatever was deemed necessary to keep the nation safe.
What did it matter if they kept me in quarantine forever? I flopped onto the small, starchy bed. Even if I didn’t have Ferae — and I absolutely, positively didn’t — life as I knew it was over. A sneeze sent people running. A rumor of serious illness, even if it wasn’t contagious, turned a person into a pariah. I’d learned that when my mother’s cancer diagnosis set off a chain reaction of hysteria. Within days of her first chemo treatment, she was fired without notice. My father’s gallery business dried up. But hardest to understand was the way our friends cut off all contact once they heard the news. I wasn’t invited to a single birthday party or sleepover that year. Since our extended family had all died during the plague, in the end, as my mom grew sicker and sicker, it was just the three of us. Now we were a family of two, me and Dad.
The image of the last fetch — hooded and flailing as the bullets hit — dropped into my mind. I buried my face in the pillow. The longer I stayed trapped in this room, the harder it was to convince myself that Director Spurling was full of crap. She had sounded certain in a way that usually came with proof. Plus, the more I considered our life, the more suspect it seemed. Dad’s monthly business trips. The never-ending supply of valuable art. We didn’t live extravagantly, but I had wondered if my dad’s gallery was doing better than he let on. We had so much original art — paintings by Rothko, O’Keeffe, Lucian Freud, and more — hanging on our apartment walls. It was especially sketchy considering he’d had to declare bankruptcy after my mother died. Her hospital bills had created a gaping crater of debt and yet, within eight years, Dad had not only paid it all off, but also built up savings. Definitely sketchy.
“Your name is on everything in case something happens to me,” he’d said once while giving me keys to several deposit boxes, all at different banks. At the time, I’d figured that something meant a terminal illness or car accident — not execution.
At least the biohaz agents hadn’t arrested him. It was obvious Spurling didn’t know where my father was and thought that I did. Probably because most parents didn’t leave their kids with the housekeeper for a week every month with no way of contacting them. And I’d put it down as another one of Dad’s quirks: He hated dials and refused to carry one. What if all along his real reason for not calling was that he’d been in a place where dials didn’t work?
So, if my father wasn’t in California and the biohaz agents didn’t have him, where was he?
Please, please don’t be in the Feral Zone.
If he was on the other side of the wall, he couldn’t stay there forever … and not just because of the risk of infection. The only people living in the Feral Zone today were banished criminals. My art-loving father wouldn’t last a week.
Footsteps clacked in the corridor outside my door. I sat up as the lock of my containment room clicked and the door opened. A woman with sharp features and spiky gray hair stepped in. Director Spurling, without a face mask, without a jumpsuit. It could mean only one thing. “You got my blood test back.” I scrambled off the bed. “I’m fine.”
“Would I be standing here if you were infected?”
A weight seemed to slip from my shoulders like a sodden coat. I hadn’t even realized how worried I’d been. Some tiny part of me must have thought there was a chance that I’d been exposed. Probably the same part that was beginning to believe that my dad might be a fetch.
Spurling held out my dial. In her tightly cut black suit, computer tablet in hand, she was more than a little intimidating.
“Are you letting me go?” I slipped the dial’s chain over my head.
“It’s an option, but not one that will help your father.”
“I don’t know where he is. Really.”
“I’ve been thinking, Delaney, that perhaps this situation can be salvaged. Follow me.” Pivoting on her heel, Spurling strode away.
What else could I do? I followed. Though I couldn’t help noticing that Director Spurling was moving suspiciously fast and that there were no other agents around. In fact, the halls were so empty they echoed. Every containment room we passed was empty too. Yes, it was late, but the whole scene felt wrong. “Where are we going?”