Bach must have blacked out, because the
next thing he remembered was someone dragging him out of the quarantine center.
After that, his next memory was waking up in a cell, handcuffed to a chair with
no idea where he was. Too weak to break free, he tried anyway—to no avail.
A man in a white coat and one of the
island’s guards walked into the room. Bach recognized the man in white from the
school as Mr. Cheung, the mathematics teacher. Cheung walked up to Bach and
injected something into his neck.
“What are you doing to me?” Back wanted to
know.
“Just relax. This is going to keep you
calm,” the teacher claimed.
“Is he secured now?” the soldier asked.
“He’s not going anywhere.” Cheung nodded.
The cell’s doors opened and Coles strode
in with two more people dressed in white. One was Hailey’s father, Charles
Davenport, and the other Bach didn’t know.
“What do you want from me, Coles?” Bach’s
speech was slurred and he found it hard to think straight.
“This is the subject.” The unknown man
walked up to him. “He’s stage three infected.”
“He looks remarkable. How come he’s not
going crazy?” Hailey’s father asked.
“I have no clue,” Cheung replied. “Sir
Charles, his blood work is clean, but when I looked at his DNA we realized
there was something very wrong.”
“You saw his blood work, Tom?” Charles
asked the unknown man.
“I rechecked it after Silas.” The other
man nodded.
“Dr. Hindle saw the same thing that I did.
He’s a post-stage three infected,” Cheung continued.
“What the hell is post-stage three
infected?” Charles asked.
The teacher glanced at the island’s
leader, and then at Dr. Hindle as if to say, that Charles was an idiot for
asking the question.
“Stage one means he’s been exposed to the
virus most likely bitten or has been kissed by someone infected. A stage one
infected has no symptoms. Stage two, they get the fever and by stage three
they’ve gone crazy and are dangerous to others.” Coles turned to Cheung.
“There’s no other stage.”
“Well it looks like there’s one now,” Tom
Hindle replied.
“Like I said, I have no clue as to what’s
going on inside this boy, but it’s possible the mutation might make him immune
to the disease,” Cheung said.
“At least that’s the theory. I’m pretty
certain, but we need to do some more testing.” Tom nodded.
“You think we can get a cure out of this
kid?” Coles gestured in Bach’s direction.
“If we’re lucky, we might get a vaccine,”
Tom answered. “But he’ll give us something.”
“I cannot help you cure this disease which
you gave to yourselves,” Bach seethed.
“We’ve a long way to go before we can even
begin to understand what’s going on inside of him. Any talk of creating a
vaccine is premature.” Cheung ignored Bach’s response. “He might not even
survive that long.”
“You do know I can hear you?” Bach asked.
“I never trusted you, Bach.” Coles walked
over to him. “There was something wrong with you. Doctor Hindle is going to
figure it out and we’re going to unlock how you work.”
“Don’t provoke him, please, Major.”
Charles signaled to Coles. “We don’t want him to become agitated.”
Bach lifted up his head and looked at the
man while the room was spinning around him.
“You may be saving thousands of lives.”
Cheung tried to reassure him. “You’ll save everyone, everyone including
Hailey.”
“Leave her out of this,” Sir Davenport
remarked.
“You do not know what you are doing. You
could never help the people of this world even if you had all the scientists
from before the outbreak working on this and someone gave you half a clue!”
Bach seethed. “Greater men than you have tried to unlock the secrets in my
Family and have failed. So will you. Your world is supposed to die.”
“You sound like you know an awful lot
about this disease,” Charles Davenport remarked suspiciously.
“You know what I think?” Coles stated.
“You’re scared and you’re trying to scare us because you think we’re a bunch of
thirteen-year-old girls.”
“You’ve nothing to fear from me or these
people. I give you my word, you won’t be killed. You will have to stay here,
but you’ll be comfortable,” Cheung tried to assure him.
“So I am your prisoner?” Bach asked.
“You won’t be alone much longer, your
friend Felip will soon be joining you,” Coles continued.
“No, he’s gone.” Bach grinned defiantly.
“We know. Blair saw him scaling the outer
wall. We’ve got patrols looking for him. If we can find him, we’ll bring him
back safely,” Sir Davenport added.
“You will not find him,” Bach stated.
“Then you’re going to be down here alone.
It makes no difference to me,” Coles retorted and started to leave the room.
“Wait, Major Coles…Sir?” Bach pleaded.
The soldier paused to look back at him,
still looking irritated.
“Let me say goodbye to my friends. I do
not want her to feel I have abandoned her!”
“No, you leave my daughter out of this!”
Sir Charles yelled.
“She’ll get over you, don’t worry,” Coles
added.
“Wisteria, can I see her?” Bach ignored
Sir Charles. “Please, I am asking you for a favor.”
Coles’s jaw clenched and he turned to the
other soldier in the cell. “If he mentions her name again, I want you to cut
out his tongue.”
