They writhed, buzzing maniacally, straining to stab my hands, the tips of their stingers millimeters from my epidermis.
I watched the shock flood through Nadine’s face.
As her left hand reached up to release her shoulder harness, I bit the heads off the hornets, flicked the business ends of their bodies across the pod, and moved out of the way as Nadine launched herself at me.
She crashed into my seat and tried to right herself, but I was already on her, my right hand squeezing her throat, her eyes bulging, her hands clawing at my face.
“Be still,” I said.
She kept fighting.
“Be still!”
She calmed herself. I eased my pressure around her neck but didn’t let go. I glanced at my phone, praying Edwin had sent the new list. He had. Seventeen contenders.
“AJ Vaccines.” I studied her face more closely than I’d ever studied anything in my life. “Alexion. BioCryst. Ennogen.”
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“InGenX.”
She closed her eyes and looked away from me. I leaned in closer, pinning her to my seat. “Open your eyes, Nadine.” She wouldn’t. I squeezed. “Look at me!” She looked at me. I continued reciting the list of companies Edwin had sent. “Kora Healthcare.” No. “Leyden Delta.” No. “Merck. Omega. Phoenix Labs.”
Tears were running down her face.
“Ridge Pharma. Stirling-Anders. Teva Pharmaceuticals. Tor. Underell Solutions. Vifor. Zentiva.”
“I guess you’ll have to kill me.”
I sat on her lap, clutched her throat with one hand, her face with the other—a face I had laughed and cried with. A face that had—the last time I’d seen it before my life was upended—comforted me as I grieved in front of a memorial my actions had played a part in building.
“Open your eyes.” I said the names faster this time. “AJ Vaccines, Alexion, BioCryst, Ennogen, InGenX, Kora Healthcare, Leyden Delta, Merck, Omega, Phoenix Labs, Ridge Pharma, Stirling-Anders, Teva, Tor, Underell Solutions, Vifor, Zentiva.”
And again, faster…
“AJVaccinesAlexionBioCrystEnnogenInGenXKoraLeydenDeltaMerckOmega.”
I stopped.
Nadine stared up at me.
Trembling.
“It’s Omega.”
She said nothing.
I let go of her throat and threw myself back into her seat. I had been reasonably confident that Omega Laboratories had elicited a reaction—her racing pulse had increased 5 bpm, her systolic blood pressure spiking. But the look on her tear-stained face as she slumped back into my seat and stared out the window said everything.
I’ve failed.
I pulled out my phone and texted Edwin:
It’s Omega. Get me floor plans for the entire building.
I looked at Nadine, said, “If you’d gone through with helping Kara, it would’ve destroyed you.”
“You’re probably right.”
Our speed had slowed to 250 mph, and out the window, I could see the skyline of New York City—or what remained of it—glowing in the night.
NYPD WAS WAITING FOR us at the gate in Grand Central, and as they cuffed Nadine, Edwin stepped out of his pod, which had been a few minutes behind ours.
He walked over, looking Nadine up and down with a quiet fury that said more than his words ever could. As I watched them lead her away, I feared what would become of her. Would Edwin take her to a black site for study like he’d done with me? Subject her to virtual interrogation? She deserved better than what had happened to me. I couldn’t believe it had come to this with her, but I had to push that grief away for now.
“Director Rogers?” We turned to the young female cop who had stayed behind. “I’m supposed to take you to the SWAT team.”
We followed her out of the Grand Central underground, up through the main hall and onto Park Avenue, where she’d left her cruiser double-parked.
As we rode south, I studied the floor plans Edwin had sent me for 140 Broadway, the skyscraper that housed Omega Laboratories. Omega had been a beta-phase lab, occupying the entirety of floors 33 and 34. They built flu vaccines for clinical trials, prior to the final-phase product moving into mass production for the market. Of course, that was all before Lower Manhattan flooded.
“Maybe this is a mistake,” Edwin said.
“What? This raid?”
“You have no idea what you’re walking into. People are going to die. I could probably get authorization for a drone strike. Hit the building before dawn. Just fucking bring it down.”
“I’ve heard estimates that ten thousand people live in Lower Manhattan.”
“There’d be some collateral damage.”
“And we’d never know for sure that we got her. Or the virus she built. I want eyes on her.”
One forty Broadway was an International Style building of glass and black steel, its initial construction completed 101 years ago. I quickly scrolled through each of the fifty-one floors, committing the various layouts to memory.
We rolled past Union Square Park, then down Broadway until it terminated at the intersection of Houston Street, one of the new southern boundaries for inhabitable Manhattan. The flood zone wasn’t a straight line across the island. There were variations. All of SoHo was underwater, but there were neighborhoods that high tide didn’t submerge, like parts of Chinatown.
Stepping out of the cruiser, I approached the line of Jersey barriers and chain-link fencing that blocked travel farther south. In the distance, beyond the barricade, I could see water lapping at the street where the tide had stopped.
Behind me, the city lights glowed in their iconic shades of white and champagne. Straight ahead, the only thing visible was a ribbon of starlit sky, squeezed between black buildings. I’d seen photos of this ghost city at night, but I’d never been here. There was something unnerving about the forest of featureless, black monoliths that now comprised Lower Manhattan. Of course, it wasn’t completely abandoned. The homeless had taken over three years ago. They called it New Venice. Far in the distance, I could see light sources emanating through broken windows—open fires in high-rise encampments.
Edwin came up behind me. “They know you’ve got the lead here.”
“You trust them?”
“It’s just NYPD bio-SWAT. They do what they’re told.”
I climbed over the concrete barricade and slipped through an opening in the fence.
“Hey,” Edwin called after me. I glanced back. “Watch yourself.”
Halfway down the next long block, I saw shadows and flashlights.
I announced myself as I drew within range, my inherent night vision overlaying details from the existing star-and city-light.
I saw four rafts and a dozen SWAT officers making final weapons checks. Two people in night-camo hazmat suits finished loading gear into a raft and walked over.
We introduced ourselves. The team leader was Bob Noyes, a burly, bearded man who looked like he could do some real damage. Beside him stood a silver fox named Aaron Brandes, who was presently shoving a lithium battery into a drone.
Noyes called everyone over. “Let’s focus up!”
The team hadn’t pulled their hoods on yet, so I made a quick scan, trying to establish eye contact with each of them, seeing what I could read in the low light.