My pocket vibrated and then rang. Startled, I fished out my dad’s iPhone, my heart pounding. I was so used to the prohibition against phones in the NSA buildings by now that a ringing cell phone at work was enough to dump a rush of adrenaline into my bloodstream. But of course, we weren’t in an NSA building, and nobody knew what correct security procedures were anymore.
I looked at the screen and recognized my father’s home number. “Hello?” I said.
“Neil?”
“Mom! How are you? How’s Dad?”
I felt guilty for how little time I had managed to spend with my parents. I had essentially abandoned them there at the hospital, while their doctor fought her own infection in another wing. But what else could I have done? I couldn’t trust my dad on his own, and I couldn’t very well bring him to the NSA.
“He’s okay, or at least he was,” my mom said. “But they won’t let me see him anymore.”
“What? Why not?”
“Some people came and moved him. They said he was dangerous, and they’d take care of him. They wouldn’t let me go with him.”
“Where are you?” I asked, then remembered that, of course, she must be at Dad’s house, because that’s the phone she had called from. “Stay there,” I said. “I’ll be right over. We’ll go to the hospital together, and we’ll figure this out.”
I made my apologies to the team. “I have to go,” I said. I explained to them what was happening. “I don’t know if it’s good or bad,” I said. “Somebody may be taking the infection seriously and quarantining patients. But I’m afraid it’s something worse.”
I took the roads at top speed, trying not to think about the possibility that my dad had fallen into the hands of Dr. McCarrick’s staff. I had no idea where he had found his collection of infected subjects. It seemed possible they were casing hospitals for recognized symptoms and then descending with the authority of USAMRIID to whisk patients away.
I crunched into the driveway and was surprised to see no cars parked by the house. I tried the door, found it open, and stepped inside. “Mom?” No answer. Had she misunderstood and driven to the hospital without me?
I climbed the stairs slowly, afraid of what I might discover. “Hello? Is anyone home?”
Silence. I continued up. My father’s bedroom door was closed. I touched the handle and hesitated, remembering the trap at Paul’s lab. I took a deep breath, held my sleeve over my mouth and nose, and swung the door wide.
My father and mother sat on the bed facing me, holding hands. They were not the only people in the room. Before I could register who the others were, I was tackled from behind, knocked to the floor by someone big. I thrashed and tried to get up, but more people jumped on me, strangers, holding my arms and legs. “I’m sorry,” my mother said. “Neil, I’m so sorry.”
They pinned me down and someone wrapped duct tape around my ankles. I caught a glimpse of Mei-lin leaning over me, her face impassive. “Do it,” she said.
Of course. Mei-lin had gotten out, had probably let my father out as well. Lauren hadn’t been able to hold her there against her will and had eventually let her go free. Or maybe Lauren herself was infected. It didn’t matter. They had deceived me, all of them, and I had walked into it as easily as a cow into a slaughterhouse.
My mother leaned over me holding a small Ziploc bag of white powder. “No, Mom,” I said. “Don’t do it. I don’t want this.”
“It’s for your own good, honey,” she said. She opened the bag, used a teaspoon to scoop a small amount of the powder, and blew it in my face. I tried to hold my breath, but one of the strangers holding me down punched me unexpectedly in the stomach. I gasped for air, involuntarily inhaling thousands of spores.
I coughed and spat, but I knew it would do no good. They coated the insides of my lungs now, taking root. I was one of them now, or would be once the sickness ran its course.
“Hold him still,” Mei-lin said. She leaned over me with a syringe. I kicked out, trying to get free, or at least to knock it out of her hand, but I was held too tightly. The needle bit into my arm, and she pressed the plunger home. “This is just to help you relax,” she said. “You have a long trip ahead of you, and you’ll be feeling pretty sick.”
Resist it, I thought. Don’t let it take control. But there was nothing to resist. The fungus wasn’t in my mind yet.
“Dad!” I shouted. “Help me!”
My father turned his head and looked at me. If there was any uncertainty in his mind, any struggle for control, I couldn’t see it in his face. “Don’t fight it, son,” he said. “There’s no point. You’ll understand soon enough.”
CHAPTER 29
I had the vague awareness of being shuffled into a car and then out of it and into another one. The second car had a very loud engine, persistent enough that it seemed to blot out thought. It was only after what seemed like a very long time that I realized it wasn’t a car at all but an airplane. I gradually became aware of having arms and legs, and my vision swam into focus. I was propped into a seat in a small passenger jet, probably a private one generally used by corporate executives. Out the window, I saw only ocean.
“We’ll be landing in Panama in thirty minutes,” said a female voice. “Then we’ll refuel for the final jump to Porto Velho.”
My chest burned. I tried to take a deep breath, but it caught in my throat, and I coughed violently. I felt something wet on my chin.
“He’s waking up,” said a male voice.
Mei-lin appeared next to me. She wiped my mouth and chin with a warm cloth. “Not much longer,” she said. I felt a distant pain as a needle slid into my arm. I tried to move, to push her away, but my limbs didn’t want to obey me. A few minutes later, I slipped away again.
When I came to again, the plane was on the ground and the engine had stopped. “Can you walk?” Mei-lin asked.
This time my arms and legs moved when I asked them to, though they were still strapped together with duct tape. I shifted my weight, angled my legs over the edge of the chair, and stood. My legs ached, as if I had been sleeping on them for hours, and the jabs of pins and needles crackled up and down my skin. “You’re on the tarmac in Porto Velho,” she said. “Everyone here is Ligados. There is nowhere to run, no one to hear you if you shout. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“Okay. I’m going to cut the tape off of your arms and legs. You’re not going to run or fight, are you?”
I shook my head. She used a scalpel and sawed through the tape, first my legs, then my hands. I yanked the remaining bits of tape off and rubbed my wrists. I felt terrible. My head and throat and chest hurt, and I was sweating despite the cool air-conditioned cabin. I tried to take a step, but the plane spun around me, and I nearly fell.
“Okay, easy does it,” Mei-lin said. She hung on to me to keep me from falling over. I wanted to push her onto the floor and stab her with her own scalpel, but given my current strength, that didn’t seem likely. Besides, I knew the betrayal hadn’t really been Mei-lin’s fault. She was a slave now, the same as my parents and my brother. The same as I would be, too, in a few more hours.
She led me off the jet. On the tarmac, a hundred yards away, sat a tiny turboprop airplane with red stripes on its wings. Two men half-led, half-dragged me to the plane and lifted me up inside it. A gray-haired man with a grizzled beard and headphones covering his ears stalked around outside the aircraft, checking it from every angle and consulting a clipboard.
Finally, he climbed into the cockpit and pulled the door shut. “Better strap in,” he said in Portuguese. He and I were the only people in the plane.