“I can’t guarantee his life. It’s not a simple decision. There are factors. Ramifications. How do I explain it to the others who also had people they loved…and were forced to stay behind…”
“You already told the masses that you are making decisions for the good of the System.” Lucy was proud of this argument and she felt her confidence building.
“So, all of my addendums are just to benefit the Kings,” Huck said and he set his fork down and leaned in, running his tongue over his teeth. “You. Ethan. Grant. A little pathway of future resentment. Is that what you want?”
“I don’t care about what other people think.” Lucy deflated.
“You should. You must.”
“I just want to see him.”
“Even with the personal risk of being infected?”
Lucy nodded again.
Huck sighed. “Tell me about Oregon.”
She drew in a sharp breath. Telling Huck the truth was too dangerous, and that was not including the fact that telling him how Darla and Teddy survived would be admitting that her father left them the vaccines.
“How did the others survive?” Huck asked her again, more pointedly. “Tell me what is in Oregon and I will give you the boy. I will spare him.”
“Just like that?”
He snapped his fingers. “It is my decision to make.”
She cleared her throat and her hands shook. “There is a woman and her son.”
“Vaccinated.” It was a question. Huck narrowed his eyes and waited for her reply.
She hesitated and then thought of Grant. His skin had turned so yellow and he looked so weak. Yet his letter to her had been kind and spirited. Grant was the epitome of everything good and amazing in the world—and he was being sacrificed. How could she make the choice to never see him again? She needed him.
“My dad left extra vaccines for his kids as a precaution in case we missed a dose. He was afraid of something happening to him before—” as Lucy started to tell Huck, she began to understand her father’s fear. One misstep with Huck could have cost him his place in the System and his clues, his room in the fruit cellar, and his vaccines were ways to ensure that his kids would survive.
“Just the two people?”
Lucy nodded. “We gave the other vaccines away. But when I left, it was just my brother, this woman, and her small son. Teddy,” she added, remembering the child’s face. “They deserve to live. All of them.”
Huck rose from the table without warning and picked up a napkin from beside his plate. He dabbed the corner of his mouth and then dropped the napkin back down. “Thank you,” he said.
“Grant?” Lucy asked in a panic.
“I’ll discuss it with your father,” he replied as he turned and walked away—his back to her, his shoes clapping against the floor. He headed back toward the elevators and out of the Sky Room.
“You said it was your decision,” Lucy called after him. “You said you’d save his life.”
“I will save his life,” Huck continued, still walking away. “But whether or not you get to see him ever again? That is up to your father.” He rounded the corner and disappeared out of sight.
Without even a formal goodbye, Huck was gone, and Lucy sat staring at her plate, reeling, and feeling tricked.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Scott stood outside Huck’s office. He took in a deep breath and then knocked, waiting for an affirmative answer before walking inside. When Huck called from behind the door, he turned the knob and entered. He’d been a visitor to the office several times, but he never tired of the glorious mural painted on each of the four walls. Each time it made his heart skip. Huck had commissioned an artist to create a replica of the view from his office at the old Fourth and Main building where he had conducted most of his business.
If he didn’t stare directly at the artwork, Scott could pretend that he was back in the real world, meeting Huck for the first time, sitting at that office. And when he let his imagination travel in that direction, he often wondered if he would make the same decisions. Ultimately, despite the fear and complications, he was proud that he had saved his family. Lucy could pontificate all she wanted with her narrow understanding of how the world worked, but Scott was secure that he had done the right thing.
Lucy would understand someday. Maybe it wouldn’t be until she had children of her own, but she would understand.
“Sit, sit,” Huck instructed and Scott obeyed. He lowered himself into the big leather chair opposite Huck’s desk and waited for his boss to explain the nature of their meeting. “Your daughter and I had a lovely breakfast this morning, Scott.” Huck leaned back in his chair and folded his hands above his head.
“Thank you for meeting with her. I’m sure you were able to answer many of her questions,” Scott answered, weighing his words.
“She cares deeply for the boy.”
“So it would appear.”
“Young love. It’s hard to decide if it’s wonderful or misguided. In this case, I told your daughter that Grant was unsafe from a practical standpoint.”
“That was my concern as well,” Scott admitted.
“What have you been able to discover? An anomaly?”
Scott shrugged. “There are markers that would indicate it could be genetic. But I’m running tests against some of our other blood samples…without a larger sample, I don’t know. I’m trying to narrow it down soon.”
“Good. Here’s the deal. If Grant is a singular case…a mistake, then he can live.”
Turning his head, Scott looked at Huck. He blinked and bit the underside of his lip. “I’m sorry. What?” Scott asked. This edict defied everything he had been told; all of his experiments and tinkering were for nothing. “There’s no way to know if he’s a single case…just the fact that anyone carried an immunity to that virus is suspicious.”
Huck waved Scott’s reply away like it was odiferous. “Like a flip of a coin. If the resistance to the virus is genetic, I want him gone. Nobody should know that there could be people out there who have survived. It will only create dissention and a desire to go after them. But if he’s an exception…a mistake. A rarity. Then,” Huck crossed his arms over his chest, “we can pass off his inclusion like he is a miracle.”
“I can’t know for sure unless we can compare him to others like him…”
Huck waved this impediment away too. “You are the best, Scott. You will submit a full report and you will deal with it. And in the meantime…I promised your daughter that she could see him.”
Scott stayed still, but his left leg twitched. After a moment, he rubbed his forehead with his pointer finger. “Oh,” he muttered. “Well, then, Lucy must have had a compelling argument…I’m impressed. I’m sure she’ll be very grateful…”
“Her arguments were weak. Based on the assumption that someone deserves to live simply because they’ve been born. In the end, I told her it was up to you.” Huck rose and paced the length of the room, his hands behind his back, and Scott watched. “I figured,” he continued, “that you’d want to make that decision…since you appear to need to play God.”
“What?” Scott remained seated, but his eyes followed Huck’s pacing. “I don’t know what that means.”
Huck stopped and locked his eyes into Scott’s and Scott resisted the urge to look away first. “You know…deciding on your own to go against what we had outlined. You have some explaining to do, Mr. King.”
“I don’t know what—”
“I trusted you,” Huck seethed through a clenched jaw. “We had rules. You, who were asked to enforce the vaccinations…”