Chapter 15
The answer is in the antidote. It has to be.
I’m not a scientist. I was a psychology student who spent more time serving bagels than I did studying brains before the world ended, and nothing about that qualifies me to explain what the hell is happening to Maverick Brooks. But I know what I saw.
Maverick was bitten by a newly Turned lurker and he survived.
It has been three days since Eileen took a chunk out of his shoulder, and Maverick is sitting on the edge of a cot in Sunnyside’s infirmary bitching because Veronica won’t let him leave.
His fever finally broke yesterday. The black disappeared from his eyes before that.
Simon was right. Instead of Turning, in less than twenty-four hours, Maverick’s shoulder was completely healed.
Unlike Chase, he doesn’t even have a scar lingering from the bite.
If I hadn’t been there to see Eileen chowing down, I never would’ve believed he was bit at all.
There has to be a reason for it. I mean, the Doctor did something to him in his office, and he still kept some of his humanity.
I don’t know what kept him from Turning in the first place.
No one does. Delilah says there were too many variables when Maverick received the tainted Injection for her to guess why he never became like the others; she admits that there were early reports after the Turning that maybe two perfect of those who took the Injection didn’t Turn right away.
She doesn’t know what happened to them, but Maverick found a way to save himself: the antidote.
Whether or not it was a coincidence, after the amount he’s taken over the past ten months, he walked away from a lurker attack and survived without taking another because there wasn’t one left to be had.
What if there was, though? What if, along with hunting lurkers, we focused on creating more antidotes? I remember how, shortly after our arrival at Sunnyside, Veronica and Delilah talked about some scientist who knew the formula and was refusing to allow the antidote to be made.
What if we changed her mind?
“The antidotes,” I say.
Delilah glances at me.
We’re sitting around one of the tables in the pavilion, though sitting might be a generous way to describe our setup.
I’m sitting. Chase is next to me, his arm slung over my shoulder.
Veronica has been pacing for the last five minutes, and Maverick is supposed to be in the camp’s makeshift infirmary but is, instead, leaning against the nearest post that holds up the roof to the outdoor eating area.
Delilah is sitting on the opposite side of table as Chase and me, fiddling with the spaghetti strands on her plate that she hasn’t quite finished yet.
We’re not alone. It’s that cozy time after dinner, where the sun is setting, a team of rebels are going around the camp, making sure all of the torches are lit and there’s no sign of lurkers on the outskirts of the settlement.
The work day is done. Hunters are getting ready for their evening patrol, and campers like me are heading to their cabins now that they’ve eaten and finished their daily tasks.
Not us. I was visiting Maverick when Delilah and Veronica came in to the infirmary to check on him and get an updated report from Annie.
For now, Gus is running the trading post since Veronica wanted eyes on Maverick unless he took a turn for the worse; for the same reason, David was tasked with sitting in the corner, prepared to end the former cop if there was any sign of Maverick being to Turn.
I got up when the twins entered, murmuring that I was going to see if Chase was available to have dinner with me.
Maverick proclaimed that he was feeling peckish for the first time in days.
Somehow he convinced Veronica to let him come to dinner, and David took the opportunity to do whatever it is that he does when Veronica isn’t giving him tasks to do.
Dinner’s over now, but while the rest of the pavilion thinned out, we’re still here and I blame it on how Chase finally looked Maverick, shook his head, and said, “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you didn’t die, but I just don’t understand how you’re alive.”
That got me thinking, and I don’t think I’m the only one, either.
“The antidotes,” I repeat. “It has to be because of the antidotes.”
To my surprise, Delilah nods. “That’s what we think, too.”
“We?” asks Chase.
Veronica scoffs. “She means her. Delilah got the brains. I’m just the pretty one.”
“Vee…”
“What? I know my own strengths.”
Despite myself, I smile.
Delilah doesn’t. She’s frowning as she says, “Maverick has received repeated doses of the antidote over an extended period time. Like, a fuckton more of anyone I’ve heard of. If his body adapted to it—”
“Then we can make everyone immune to a lurker’s bite?” I ask hopefully.
“No. I don’t think so.”
Damn it.
Delilah adjusts her sunglasses. “We don’t know what happened.
We don’t know whether it’s permanent, whether it could happen again, or whether his response has anything to do with the antidote at all.
We only know that he should have Turned and he didn’t multiple times now.
He’s safe to stay at camp, that’s as far as I’m willing to go. ”
That counts for something, I think to myself. That’s the part that matters. Mav was ready to put his last bullet through his skill because he thought that being bit like that… that was the end for him. I stopped him, though, and I had time earlier today to explain why I did it.
He could’ve bitten me. When he had me beneath him, he could’ve Turned on a dime and attacked me. Instead, he tried to kill himself, and if still was aware enough to know that he was still Maverick Brooks, I couldn’t watch him blow his brains away.
He understands. Hell, he thanked me in that gruff way I’m so used to. He’s grateful I believed in him enough to give him another chance, and if we need antidotes so that we’re never put in such a position again…
Veronica is one step ahead of me.
“But Eileen wasn’t,” she says. “Neither was Perry. And they’re only our most recent losses. I don’t want to lose any more people. We need Gwen.”
We’ve always needed Gwen. Gwen Martin has the formula for the antidote locked inside her head, and retrieving her has been part of the plan ever since Kristian confirmed she was alive.
It was Maverick who kept working on explosive devices when he wasn’t hunting lurkers for camp.
He wants to go after the NRI. Veronica has determined that we’ll wait until she can extricate Gwen.
That means waiting until Delilah’s contact in Manhattan locates her.
Who knows how long that will take?
Turns out, the answer is a week after Maverick is released from the infirmary.
The camp moves fast. We have to. Kristian isn’t sure how long that Gwen will be kept in the government-owned building off-site from the main NRI facility, just like he warns Delilah that he won’t be able to check in again for at least a week.
According to her contact, there has been some sort of breakthrough when it comes to PP-57—the next and completely unnecessary version of the Injection—and he is being put to work.
So are we.
Within an hour of Kristian’s report, Delilah has two picnic tables covered in Julian Flynn’s maps.
The man was the facilities manager at the NRI, but judging by the amount of paper he left behind, he was either obsessed with emergency preparedness or had absolutely no faith in the people who designed Manhattan.
Possibly both.
“He hated blocked exits,” Delilah explains, tracing one route with her finger. “Every time construction closed one, he’d find another. Service corridors, old subway access, sewer connections. Most of the people at the NRI didn’t know these existed.”
“But Jules did,” says Veronica.
“Jules knew everything about that building.”
The sadness in Delilah’s voice makes her twin go quiet.
The plan is simple only because every suicidal plan sounds simple when it’s still lines on a map. We take a small group into Manhattan. We use one of Jules’s routes to stay out of sight. We find Gwen, get her out of the room she’s been locked in, and bring her back to Sunnyside.
Then, if we have the opportunity, we finish what Maverick started.
Destroy Project Phoenix.
Veronica is already planning for us to head out in two days.
We’re not ready to go tomorrow just yet—not when she still needs to pick who she’s bringing with her, gather emergency supplies, and plot the path they will bring the team to the NRI—but she wants to leave before sun-up the day after tomorrow.
And, come hell or high water, I’m going with her.
I thought it was obvious that I was going. I’ve been in on the “make all the antidotes” plan from the beginning, and while Maverick has a valid grip with the NRI and Project Phoenix, I like to think I do to.
But then Veronica asks Chase if he’ll come. She asks Maverick, too.
She doesn’t ask me.
I clear my throat. “I’m going, too.”
Chase’s head whips my way. “Holden. No.”
Here we go again.
Damn it. We’ve had this argument so many times since the Turning that I could probably perform both parts of it myself.
Hallie is a sensor. Hallie sounds the alarm.
Hallie stays safely behind the walls while Xandra goes hunting.
Except Xandra is dead, I’m not Hallie any longer, and I’ve killed enough lurkers since leaving the Grave to know I belong in the field as much as anyone.
Veronica rubs her temple. I’m sure she has a headache, but all she says is, “Holden, I could use your sensing ability. As long as Chase can keep his head on with you there, I’ll take you both. Otherwise it’s one of you. So who is it?”
I open my mouth.
Chase gets up. “Can we get back to you on that?”
Veronica nods, already distracted by another one of the maps. “I need a firm answer by tomorrow afternoon. The team will be finalized then.”
“You’ll have one.” Chase offers his hand to me. “Holden? Come with me. Let’s go talk.”
You know what? “Gladly.”