Chapter 43
43
Gil scrambled down the slope, keeping his eyes on the place where Nyx had hit the water. Just as he reached the dock, Nyx burst through the surface, gasping and flailing.
“Did you get hit?” Gil reached a hand over the side to help him up.
“No. Maybe. Fuck.” He rolled onto the dock and pulled up his pants leg. Blood trickled down toward his ankle. “I got shot! He shot me!”
“Calm down. That’s not from a gunshot. You probably got a scratch climbing onto the dock. Take a breath. You okay?” He patted Nyx’s back, even though he didn’t have much sympathy for the guy. He’d brought this on himself.
“I fucked up.” Nyx groaned and covered his head with his hands. “I really fucked up.”
“What’s going on? What are those mercenaries after and who are they working for?”
Nyx struggled with himself for a long moment, then gave in. “Fuck them, might as well tell you. They’re called New Frontiers, they’re some kind of venture group. I think maybe they own the company that did the core samples in Ninuk? Anyway, they knew all about the omegavirus. They wanted to know what Victor was working on. They said he was stealing knowledge from the Ahtna for his own purposes. Which he was!”
“So you spied on Victor’s research?”
Nyx touched the tattoo on the side of his head. “It’s not exactly spying when I’m his assistant. Besides, he was mostly just losing it. He had this spray that he claimed was going to save the world.”
“Yeah, it’s from some type of fungus that interacts with your immune system.”
Nyx gave a hoot of laughter. “Yeah, no. That’s bullshit.”
Gil narrowed his eyes at the kid. “What do you mean, bullshit? He tried it on Ani. Remember she had the antibodies?”
“Then she had a lil’ case of the omega, that’s it. Very mild, probably didn’t notice. I’m the mycologist, not Victor. That spray does nothing.”
“Then…” Gil shook his head, at a total loss. “Then what’s this all about? What do they want from Victor?”
In the silence of Nyx’s pause, water lapped against the steel posts of the dock. Mist wove around the tall spruce surrounding them. Gil held his breath, waiting for whatever revelation was yet to come.
”It’s my fault,” Nyx finally said. “See, I was paying attention to Victor. Every time we talked, he seemed more out there. Like he was saving the world, but also he was suspicious of everyone. Paranoid. He hallucinated a lot. I realized that he was dosing himself with so much of that fungus, the Milagrosporos , that he became delusional. I mean, it’s a hallucinogen. He was living in a fantasy world. He got fixated on how he could save the world with that spray. I think the Milagrosporos really fucked him up. He needs to detox.”
Gil still didn’t understand.
“Okay, you figured out he was taking too much of that fungus. So?”
“So I…I mean, I was just reporting what was going on. To my contact. They got the idea of what to do next.”
“Which is…”
But Nyx didn’t have to say it, because all of a sudden Gil knew. “They want to turn the Milagrosporos into a bioweapon.”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus.” He’d been focused on the virus—they all had. The CDC, the Army. This entire time, it had actually been the mycelium that was the threat.
“It makes you delusional,” Nyx explained. “It makes you extremely paranoid. It stimulates the production of a chemical in your brain, like psylocibin, but a lot darker. If someone could concentrate it and release it strategically, they could really mess with a population. People would go crazy, stop trusting each other. They’d turn on each other.”
“That sounds even worse than the virus.”
“Oh, it is. The virus ain’t so bad. Our immune systems are adapting quickly. That’s why New Frontiers is focused in on the Milagrosporos . The core sampling was a bust, so was the omegavirus. They gotta turn a profit somehow.”
“What a fucking mess.”
“I know.” Nyx hung his head and plunged his hands into his hair. “I love all mycelium, all fungi. They’re my jam. None of this was my idea. I’m not an evil genius, I’m just a research assistant.”
What was he, twenty-one? Twenty-two? Gil had made plenty of mistakes at that age, though probably nothing quite so potentially catastrophic. And this kid was probably brilliant. Even smart people could be manipulated, obviously. Everyone had their biases, everyone had their soft spots.
“So they want Victor to hand over the Milagrosporos he has?”
“They want his research. I guess he wrote everything in code, that’s how paranoid he was getting. He split it up and hid it in several different places. They found most of it, but they need him to decipher it. It sounds like poetry, but it’s really code.”
Everything red, everything dead. Ice castles in the sky.
That was Victor’s research? Go figure.
Nyx groaned into his hands. “I feel so fucking stupid. Victor went off the deep end, but he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I heard them talk about some kids stumbling across their base, but I didn’t know they were Ahtna. Victor will get the kids free, won’t he?”
Gil couldn’t say what Victor would or wouldn’t do at this point.
He squeezed the kid’s shoulder. He felt sorry for Nyx. He was young and he’d made some gigantic mistakes, but they didn’t have time for an emotional meltdown. “Do you know where they were taking Victor?”
“No, but I know it’s somewhere at the head of the lake, near the glacier. We’d need either a boat or a plane. I don’t even think you can get there on foot, it’s too rough.”
They had a boat, the same one Victor had used. It was tied up at the dock right now. They had a four-wheeler. But both of those would take too long. Obviously the mercenaries didn’t really care about either Firelight Ridge or the teenagers they were holding. Once they were done using them as hostages, who knew what they’d do?
“Let’s go.” He hauled Nyx to his feet. “I’m ready to put a stop to this, how about you?”
“What are we going to do?”
“Find a cell signal and call my brother. He knows the glacier and this lake better than anyone.”
After Nyx had dried off enough to not be a shivering mess anymore, they took the speedboat to the middle of Smoky Lake, where they finally picked up a signal. He called his brother and filled him in on the situation.
It took only a few moments for his brilliant brother to put it all together. “I know where they’re going. There’s an permafrost tunnel that got drilled for research purposes years ago, then abandoned. It would be a good place to hide out.”
“Send me a pin.”
“No, I’m coming with you. I think I can help with Victor. I won’t hold you back.”
Gil winced. Lachlan might, in fact, hold him back. But he might also be helpful in dealing with Victor. Maybe it was time he stopped protecting his grown-ass twin so much.
“Okay. Heading your way.”
“No, meet me at the northern section of the lake, at the edge of the glacier. I’ll come to you.”
“How? That’ll take too long.”
“No, it won’t. I know who to call.”
About forty minutes later, at the northern edge of the lake, where the Korch glacier met the water in a chaotic jumble of ice and rocks and dirt, Gil and Nyx watched as a single-prop plane landed on the ice about a hundred yards back. Lachlan hopped out, and so did an Army soldier, followed by Sam Coburn.
Reinforcements. Thank you, Lachlan.
Gil and Nyx climbed over ice boulders and rocky outcroppings to join them. He greeted his brother with a big bearhug, as if they hadn’t seen each other in months. It felt that way. How long had it been since he’d first seen Ani on the porch?
Honestly, time had no meaning anymore.