Everyone does as she says, so it must be OK.
She starts by recapping the lecture she gave me, and then moves on to advanced topics in how everything is going to change now.
– This is proof.
She pulls on a beaded chain that hangs from her neck, tugging it from her collar until we can see the fat little rectangle of plastic dangling from it.
– I mean, real scientific proof that you.
She waves her hand at all of us.
– Exist. Or whatever.
She pulls the chain over her head and drops it on her desk.
– Images of all the known mutations of the Vyrus that I’ve catalogued. Including the ones that I.
She points at the floor.
– The ones that I, cooked up myself. Which, I mean, I may have gotten carried away and played a little god. Sorry for that. Or not. I could do it. So I did it. Because. I don’t know. I just did it. And you.
She points at Predo.
– You pissed me off just enough to set them loose. Because the idea was just to destroy them. Experiments. But you had to starve us. You couldn’t just. What was so hard to accept? A cure? What was so hard to? It’s not like anyone would have made you take it if you didn’t want to. I. Gah. Anyway.
She fingers the chain.
– This USB drive has my simulations. It has the locations of known Vyral HERV fragments in the human genome. Just a few that I’ve been able to find. But, I mean, compelling stuff. If you like that kind of thing. There are the complete records of my experiments. All of them repeatable for similar results. Procedure for a Vyrus test.
She giggles.
– Can you see the posters on the bus shelters? Some Goth with a serious look on her face. Have you been tested?
She stops giggling.
– Like the only test you need is to ask yourself, Does blood sound like what I want for dinner?
She lifts a hand.
– Yeah, I know, I’m being stupid. But I mean. Right? You know that would be the attitude for some people. Testing for the inactive Vyrus. People found guilty for having the potential to be dangerous. Anyway.
She counts off a few fingers.
– The images, the HERV map, the procedures, the test, oh, different environments hostile to the Vyrus. All of which kill the host as well, but, well, there it is. Methods for killing the infected. There that is. And the details of my theory that the Vyrus was the primary building block for all life on the planet and that Vyrally active life is the most pure and essentially earthy thing around.
She pokes at one of the old cuts near her wrist.
– I tested negative. No Vyral fragments in my HERV. A strand of random breeding that lost it. But that makes me like most people. Most people are Vyrally negative. Otherwise you guys would have spread.
She looks up.
– It has a smell, the Vyrus. Even inactive. Not strong like the way you smell one another. Like subtle. Pheromone almost. I mean, to someone who was sensitive to it, they could pick out Vyrally inactive subjects and infect them at will. That idea is in there too. What’s not.
She taps the USB.
– What’s not in there is a sample. Obviously. Runaway replicators like this, they just burn out a host. I have dead matter, but no live samples. So what is in here is an address book. Me and Sela, we interviewed all the Cure applicants, and, I mean, this wasn’t the plan, but there’s a list in here of every safe house, Clan headquarters, bolt-hole, residence, pretty much every place someone who wanted to find Vampyres could start looking and have a pretty good shot at getting a live one.
She shrugs.
– Not like it’s a threat I’m making, because I totally don’t care anymore, but it’s in there.
She closes her eyes.
– But no cure.
She covers the USB with her hand.
– No cure.
She opens her eyes.
– No cure at all.
She looks at Sela’s body.
– I’m sorry, baby.
She looks at me.
– Joe. You killed my mom?
I nod.
– She asked me to.
She crinkles the corners of her mouth.
– Is that what it takes?
I shake my head.
– No.
She raises a hand.
– Joe.
I shake my head again.
– I’d like to help, kid. I get it and all. I just.
I look into the whiskey bottle in my hand.
– I just don’t got it in me for that.
She bites her upper lip.
– It’s OK, Joe. Caring is hard.
She looks at Sela again.
– I mean.
She looks at me.
– We’ve known each other a long time.
She sets the vial on her desk next to the USB drive.
– And I don’t think I could kill you either.
She takes the gun from her lab coat pocket.
– Just do me a favor?
– Sure.
She waves the gun at everyone in the room.
– These assholes.
She picks up the vial.
– Don’t let any of them have this.
She tosses it to me and I juggle it with my lame hand and only keep it from hitting the floor by cradling it against my chest.
She nods.
– That’s only for you.
She looks at Sela.
– And don’t let them have any of my blood.
She puts the barrel of the gun under her chin.
– That’s for you too.
I’ve wondered from time to time if there’s a limit to what you can take. Is there a little gauge somewhere in your brain that slowly rises toward the red, measuring when you’ve gone beyond your capacity to endure? Blood and madness and death and cruelty. Pouring into you. And at some point, does it just overflow and flood the whole system and everything shuts down?
I’ve wondered.
It’s no lie, I killed Amanda’s mom because she asked me to. She asked me to because she was sick and she was about to kill Amanda if someone didn’t kill her first. Follow it back around that way and you could say that I killed Amanda’s mom to save Amanda’s life.
Which strikes me like something close to irony.
As I sit there.
Having refused to kill Amanda so she can exit the misery of all the things she’s seen and done in her short life. I watch her do it herself.
Clearly having reached her limit.
Born into so much of that blood and madness, it took quite a bit to push her to overload. But there it was, in the bullet she used to kill her woman, the limit of what she could take and still keep her eyes open.
I’d have liked to help her. Make it a little easier at the end to step out and get all this over with. But I’m still not sure of my own limit. If it exists, where it might be if it’s out there. With more left to do, I couldn’t take the chance that doing for her what I did for her mom would be as far as I could go.
But I keep my eye open for her. And she looks into it. And there’s maybe a smile that passes back and forth between us.
When she pulls the trigger that I can’t, I don’t blink.
What I owe her.
Looking at her dead body, I wonder if I owe her more.