We ate dinner together, a nostalgic beans-and-rice dish that my dad had cooked under my mother’s watchful eye. We spoke briefly about the events of the previous weeks. My mom could remember everything that had happened, even when she had been under the influence of the fungus. She apologized for abducting and infecting me, but I waved her apologies away. I, as well as anyone, understood how the fungus could warp your sense of what was good and right. I didn’t want her living under a burden of guilt and regret, not if I could help it.
I asked about Mei-lin, and my mom told me she was back to work at the Baltimore Washington hospital, managing fungal infection cases, especially those who had developed complications from the original infection. She had stopped by the house once to see them, and I made a mental note to pay her a visit when I could.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” she said. “A pretty girl called for you.”
“What?”
“A girl who works at a hair salon, said she met you in the hospital. Her name is Zoe.”
I remembered her instantly, the beautiful woman with the long braid who had spoken to me in the cafeteria. I remembered giving her my number, but I was astonished that she’d actually called. It also seemed wrong to be talking about a potential date so soon after everything.
“How do you know she’s pretty?” I said. “You can hear that over the phone?”
“I looked her up online.”
“You’re stalking my potential dates on social media? That’s creepy, Mom.”
A crafty smile crept onto her face. “I want grandchildren someday, you know.”
“Julia just gave you one. You’re not getting greedy in your old age, are you?”
“She sounded very nice on the phone.” Her voice broke, and her eyes suddenly filled with tears. “We need some good news around here, don’t you think?”
“I get it, I get it.” I pulled her into another embrace and kissed her forehead. “Why don’t you ask her out, if you like her so much?”
A wavering smile broke through her tears. “I’m not the one she called.”
I thought about it. Maybe it was just what I needed. A new beginning.
On Monday, I pulled into the parking lot at Fort Meade and made my way through the building to the basement. Outside, the shantytown was being dismantled, tents folded up and carted away in trucks. I made my way inside and through the building to the basement, where I stopped at Melody’s office.
“Good to have you back again,” she said. “Though I’m afraid I won’t be here much longer. You’ll have a new boss soon.”
“You’re retiring?” It had to happen eventually, I supposed—she must have been due for retirement for years. It was probably as good a time as any for her to make the switch.
“No,” she said wryly. “Not voluntarily, anyway. I’m going to be charged with treason and conspiracy and who knows what else. I might be going to prison.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“It hasn’t happened yet. There’s still a chance to fight it. But it’s in the works. Part of the political war that’s brewing to see who will end up with control of the spores and the command signal. I’m just a bit piece, I’m afraid. A pawn. But putting me away undermines the claims of the intelligence community.”
“I thought they wanted to give you an award.”
“That was the NSA. This goes higher than that.”
“It’s Barron’s doing, isn’t it? He wants to punish you for what you did to him.”
“Well, I did kind of poison his coffee.”
I swung my fist in the air, frustrated. “It’s ridiculous. You saved everyone. If not for you, New Mexico would be drifting through the stratosphere.”
“Not true,” she said. “If not for me, Barron would have kept control, and the result would have been nearly the same, only with a lot more Ligados dead.”
“It’s not right. This isn’t justice. They’re just destroying you to advance their own agenda.”
“The real question you should be asking yourself,” she said, “is what’s going to happen to you—to everyone—when the dust settles and someone emerges as the victor. Someone is going to have the power to control thousands or even millions of people as slaves. For the moment, everyone agrees that the best thing to do with that power is get people to take antifungals. But how long do you think that will last?”
Melody left me to think about that while she met with Terry Ronstadt, still the acting director of the agency, in an attempt to gain his support. I returned to my desk, feeling as low as I had for a long time. We had won, hadn’t we? Why did it feel as though everything was falling apart?
Shaunessy and Andrew and the rest of the team were all in their usual places. I thought things might be awkward with Shaunessy, but she smiled warmly and welcomed me back without a hint of embarrassment.
“So what have we got?” I asked.
“A large number of indecipherables out of Myanmar,” Andrew said. “Projecting down the coast into Thailand and as far as Malaysia. Particularly in regions where rainforests are the dominant biome.”
“You think it’s the fungus again,” I said. “That it’s spread there, and is causing the same effect.”
“That or a government got ahold of the genetic map for McCarrick’s version of it and is using it to enslave its people.”
“Or someone else’s people,” I said.
“Only one way to find out,” Shaunessy said.
I gave her a mock salute. “I’m on the job.”
I sat at my desk and logged in to my account. In many ways, the situation was even worse now than when we had first discovered the Ligados passing messages in South America. McCarrick’s spores presented a greater potential danger than the original fungus, one that would affect world politics for decades. Mind control was now part of the political landscape, even in the United States, and there was no guarantee the people at the top would use that power for good. Pockets of Neuritol users still held out throughout the country, choosing mind control of a different kind, their numbers and location unknown.
It wouldn’t be hard for anyone, given a few of the spores, to grow more of the fungus in their own backyard. They wouldn’t need a new supply from South America. And once the command signal became publicly known—which it would, eventually—mind control would affect not only politics and war, but start creeping into corporations and religious cults and crime as well. The world had become a dangerous place.
I brought up the latest batch of indecipherables on my computer and selected one at random. It was time to get back to work.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My fantastic agent Eleanor Wood was my first reader for this book, devouring it a chapter at a time as I wrote it and always asking for more. I can’t say enough how much I appreciate her encouragement and tireless efforts on my behalf.
It’s always hard to see the flaws in my own stories, so I rely on my beta readers to see what I can’t. Thanks to Mike Shultz, David Cantine, Chad and Jill Wilson, Nadim Nakhleh, Mike Yeager, Joe Reed, Jon Louis Mann, William Taylor, and Robert Walton for their invaluable comments and ideas. A special thank you to my friend Celso Antonio Almeida, who helped me present an authentic view of Brazilian locations and culture.
Thanks to my editor Rene Sears and all the great people at Pyr for loving my stories and putting their tremendous skills into creating this final book and putting it into your hands.
Finally, to my family, thanks for your enthusiasm for my stories and my successes. You make my life a delight, and I love you all.