Chapter 50
Kate
Taylor’s revelation has my head spinning. If they’ve created a successful treatment, that must mean a cure isn’t far behind. So why is Taylor adamant that it won’t happen?
I’m working through all the scenarios on my way to Parker’s room—usually I’d talk to him in the lab, but I haven’t seen him since we spoke while I was in quarantine. Taylor told me to speak to him—I’ll have to plead my case.
Whatever he has going on can’t be more important than the cure.
I stop in front of his door and knock. Leaning on the back of my heels, I wait for an answer. My eyes roam up and down the hall, fighting my impatience.
I knock again, a bit louder this time. The seconds go by slowly with no response. “Parker?” I ask at the door, hoping maybe he’s occupied or didn’t hear me.
Still nothing.
“Fuck it.” I shrug and push the door open, peeking my head in. “Hello?” Stepping inside, I see the disarray that is Parker’s living quarters: a desk scattered with papers and notebooks, a disheveled bed with books strewn across it, clothes piled up on the floor.
And Parker, hunched over a box, rummaging through it like his life depends on it. “Um, Parker?” I ask softly.
He spins, light eyes like saucers. “Fuck, Kate.” He winces. “You shouldn’t be here.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—” I’m cut off by his pained grunt. “Are you all right?”
He shakes his head, his salt-and-pepper hair sticking up in all directions. “Yes, fine, I just—” He grits his teeth before he turns back to what he was looking through. “I misplaced something, and I need to find it.”
“Do you need help?” I ask as I approach.
“No!” He shouts, startling me. He lifts the box and dumps the contents on the ground, small glass vials scattering across the floor. “No, please, you have to go.”
My hair stands on end. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea—” A muffled voice comes from the corner of the room. We both twist our heads in its direction. “What was that?” I ask.
Parker gets up and staggers to a discarded pair of pants, lifting it to reveal a walkie. The voice on the other end keeps talking, “Parker, it’s O’Brien. I need an update. We need confirmation that you’ll be ready for the airlift.”
My blood goes cold. “Airlift?”
Parker gives me a pained look before he shuts the walkie off. “Kate...”
“What’s going on?” I demand, studying his sickly pallor, the half-moons under his eyes.
He looks like he wants to come near me, but stops himself. Looking down at the walkie in his hand, his shoulders slump. “It wasn’t meant to get this far.”
“Parker.” My voice shakes. “Who was that? What are they talking about?”
The confident, self-assured doctor doesn’t stand before me; just a normal man does. A scared, confused man. “O’Brien is my outside contact.”
“No one has contact with the outside world,” I insist.
He shakes his head. “We work together at MassVax.”
“I don’t—”
“The vaccine company.”
My mind short-circuits. “You mean you worked for a vaccine company.”
“No,” he pants. It’s almost like his eyes get more bloodshot the longer I stand looking at them.
“I still do. I have this entire time—but I didn’t know they’d been working with the government to do this to everyone.
All they told me was there was this new virus and I needed to find out if a vaccine was possible. ”
My stomach drops.
“But that wasn’t what they were looking for—not really.” He winces. “They didn’t want a vaccine; they wanted a virus. A virus strong enough to wipe out entire cities, entire countries.”
“No,” I whisper.
He nods dejectedly. “A vaccine wasn’t possible and they knew that, but they kept me here anyway.
” His jaw tightens as he squeezes his eyes shut for a moment.
“But Taylor found a treatment, which was more than I could’ve expected—” He gasps in pain and staggers forward a step. “It’s temporary. And I’ve run out.”
My hands go out in front of me and I shuffle closer to the door. “You’ve run out…”
He doubles over with a yelp, his entire body shaking. Something like a snarl comes from him before he pulls himself up and looks at me, a red ring forming around his irises. “I wanted to help people. I really did.” His face crumples. “I’m sorry,” he says in a voice not wholly his own.
I back up, bumping into the door, my hand trying to find the knob to let me out. Parker is infected, it’s all over—
He stumbles to his desk, shoving pens and notebooks off the surface until he finds one.
Spinning to me, he moves toward me but halts; instead, he tosses both the notebook and the walkie in my direction.
“Take them,” he pants. “My notes, the treatment formula—maybe they can be recreated. O’Brien is dispatching a helicopter to take me out, but…
” He gives me a small, sad smile, making my heart squeeze.
“They’ll arrive tomorrow at the college. Take them and get off this island.”
I grab them as he doubles over again and I rip open his door, slamming it behind me before I all but run into Cara.
“Kate? What’s wrong?” she asks. She goes to move around me, to Parker’s door, but I grab her wrist.
“You can’t go in there,” I pant.
Her brows furrow. “Let go of me, Kate.” She rips out of my grasp and shoves me out of the way.
“No!” I scream as she pulls Parker’s door open, throwing me a look of disdain.
It only takes a millisecond for Parker to launch at her, throwing her down as he climbs over her. She lets out a surprised shriek before he snarls and latches onto her throat.
I turn and run, my hands gripping the notebook and walkie. “Infected breech,” I scream, fighting to see through the tears suddenly streaming down my cheeks. “There’s an infected loose!”