The documents and notes contained no formulas for an antidote. Tired, the crew hoped that what he did would be enough. Soon the crew will have to face the soldiers. Nicolai and Borodin were still in the U-boat pen. Major Juan and his men should be rousing.
Miller carried the rack of supposed antidotes and pushed it under the bed.
Olivia perused the notes she had taken. She played back her Dictaphone. Together with Peter and Liam Murphy, she made additions and subtractions.
“God, I feel like I’ve been in an accident.”
Ted raised himself on weak elbows. Spittle had dried at the corners of his mouth. He looked like he’d been binge drinking. Olivia had covered the man up in the night with her own parka.
“What's going on?” he asked.
“You’ve been out all night, Ted,” Miller remarked.
He rubbed the side of his head. He shut his eyes tight. “I have a headache.”
Anabia Nassif cast guilty eyes at the others. Perhaps he had overshot the morphine dose.
“Where are the others?”
Miller said Nicolai and Borodin were fixing the soldiers’ snowmobiles. Ted Cooper threw his feet off the bed, suddenly alert. He eyed Miller. Then his eyes settled on the biologist. Nassif looked away.
Cooper looked at the makeshift lab across the room, the papers, the microscope, and Nassif sitting on that chair like he would if he was performing experiments. And most suspiciously, someone had forgotten to replace the mesh in the ceiling.
The ventilator cover was open.
Ted Cooper was a smart man. He sighed, cleared his throat, and started putting on his boots. Olivia had also taken that earlier.
“What time is it?” he asked.
Miller checked his watch, “8:43…am.”
Ted rubbed his hands on his knees. He smiled. Like everyone else in the facility, Ted was showing signs of degradation; dark shadows around his eyes, his pallid skin and hairline that seemed to have receded a kilometer up his forehead since.
“Great day today, huh.”
“Yeah, great day,” Olivia answered.
As Ted left, he pulled the door closed behind him.
Dr. Nassif said, “We need to administer the antidote, to see if it might work.”
“Administer? Are you crazy?” Liam Murphy opposed. “We can’t just go and inject someone with it. What if they die?”
Helpless, Nassif pushed, “What are we supposed to do? Just keep it? For all we know it may work—”
“And for all we know it may kill whoever you inject with it.”
Liam Murphy glanced at Miller as if for support.
“Why don’t we just keep it till the right time?” Olivia suggested. “Or we could ask for permission from the major for animal testing in the lab.”
“I don’t think so,” Miller countered. “Those tubes under that bed are our leverage out of here.”
The others agreed.
There was a mirthless smile on Ted Cooper’s face.
He had been played, he knew. Something had been done to him. But whatever it was, he had slept through it. Now he had them.
Cooper had been standing behind the door all the time that members of his crew discussed. He heard it all.
He started towards the rocket room.
The world was his for the taking.
Admiral Huebner called the major again.
When Major Juan Santiago’s voice came on, the admiral knew instantly that he will not be setting his foot in that facility after all.
“Juan, are you alright?”
Santiago babbled incoherently. He sounded like he had swallowed his tongue. He repeated himself several times. Frustrated, Huebner slammed his talkie on the table.
Exec Ramirez Vasquez winced internally. The silence was golden with the admiral at times like these so he kept his mouth shut and waited.
Huebner started pacing. His motives had been in two parts: to get hold of the documents and weapons in the facility and sell it to the highest bidder. And second, to destroy the place once he has taken possession of sensitive material.
But now, it was suicide to even go near the facility.
“Vasquez, I have an assignment for you.”
Vasquez rose to attention. “What is it, sir?”
“You are going to Antarctica.”
The exec nodded.
Ted Cooper grabbed the talkie from the rambling major. He was burning up with fever.
“Admiral!!” Ted yelled.
There was no response. He tried again. He dropped the talkie on the floor and looked around. Two of the soldiers were still able to stand on their feet. He went back to major Santiago. He slapped his face.
The major snapped out of his hallucination. “Huh?”
“Come on, Major, wake up!”
Ted called two soldiers. “Hey, get the major some water.”
Minutes after, a clear-eyed major Juan was reaching for the talkie. He looked around and saw that only two of his men stood, and even those two rubbed continuously at spots on their arms and legs. His own forearm bled a long time from so much scratching.
Ted Cooper stood before him.
“They have a cure.”
The major put the talkie to his mouth. “Admiral? Admiral!”
Ted touched his shoulder, then he pushed the talkie from his mouth slowly. “Major, they have a cure. I can get you the cure, an antidote.”
“How?” He frowned. “It's not possible!”
“They made one last night.”
“How did they—”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters now is getting you cured, and your men too.”
The major pulled himself up, groaning in severe pain as he did. He limped over to the glass windows behind, where the first infected officer was. Dried blood and body tissue smeared the glass. The soldier lay on the ground, twisted, and breathing slowly.
“We have to try it on him, first,” Ted Cooper said.
“When can you get it?”
“Tonight.”
The last person to fall asleep that night was Olivia. From where he lay in pretense, Ted Cooper peeked at Olivia.
She wrote into her little book long into the late hours. Then she talked slowly into her midget recorder. It was all Ted could do to keep himself from falling asleep as well. Some of whatever he was pumped with last time still ran free in his body.
Drowsiness tugged at her eyes several times. In time, Olivia laid down but Ted wasn’t sure she had slept, for her back was turned.
The crew had been formal with him every time he went out and came back. They stopped talking when he walked in, and resumed murmured conferences when he had gone far down the hall. They left the door wide open for this purpose, he guessed. And the two Russians, Nicolai and Borodin, hadn’t come back from where they went.
Ted knew the two men were in the facility. Likely in the U-boat pen, copying designs probably. That wasn’t a serious offense yet.
Ted Cooper waited longer. He counted from one to a hundred, three times.
He listened for breathing. The men seem deep in sleep. But Olivia never snored and she almost never turned when she slept.
When the professor was satisfied that Olivia was fast asleep, Ted sat up in his bed. He waited again. No movements.
Then he slid down on to the floor and crept over to Miller’s bed. He slipped under it and picked up one test tube from the rack.
He rose up and left the room quietly.
Major Santiago was waiting.
He looked better, though his breathing was bad. That gurgling sound when the man drew breath was worrisome. There were two soldiers with him. There was one with a purple mark on his temple. He was delirious too.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Santiago glanced at the soldier and scoffed, “He said he was attacked.”