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Anden’s jeep finally slows to a halt. I frown, confused for a second. Instead of taking me back to a high-rise for my temporary apartment, we are now parked in front of the Los Angeles Central Hospital. The place where Metias died. I glance at Anden. “What are we doing here?” I ask.
“Day’s here,” Anden replies. His voice catches a little when he speaks Day’s name.
“Why?”
Anden doesn’t look at me. He seems reluctant to discuss it. “He collapsed during the evacuation to LA,” he explains. “The series of explosions we used to knock out the underground tunnels apparently triggered one of his severe headaches. The doctors have started another round of treatment for him.” Anden pauses, then gives me a grave stare. “There’s another reason we’re here. But you’ll see for yourself.”
The jeep comes to a halt. I climb out, then wait for Anden. A feeling of dread slowly creeps through me. What if Day’s illness has gotten worse? What if he isn’t going to pull through? Is that why he’s here? There’s no reason for Day to ever set foot inside this building again, not unless he was forced to, not after everything this hospital put him through.
Together, Anden and I head into the building with soldiers flanking us. We travel up to the fourth floor, where one of the soldiers swipes us inside, and then step into the Central Hospital’s lab floor. The tense feeling in my stomach only tightens as we go.
Finally, we stop in front of a smaller series of rooms that line the side of the main lab floor. As we go through one of these doors, I see Day. He’s standing outside a room with glass walls, smoking one of his blue cigarettes and looking on as someone inside gets inspected by lab technicians in full body suits. What makes me lose my breath, though, is that he’s leaning heavily on a pair of crutches. How long has he been here? He looks exhausted, pale, and distant. I wonder what new drugs the doctors are trying on him. The thought is a sudden, stabbing reminder of Day’s waning life, the few seconds he has left, slowly ticking by.
Standing beside him are a few lab techs with white jumpsuit gear and goggles dangling from their necks, each of them watching the room and typing away on their notepads. A short distance away, Pascao’s deep in conversation with the other Patriots. They leave Day alone.
“Day?” I say as we approach.
He looks over to me—a dozen emotions flicker through his eyes, some that make my cheeks flush. Then he notices Anden. He manages to give the Elector a stiff bow of his head, then turns back to watching the patient on the other side of the glass. Tess.
“What’s going on?” I ask Day.
He takes another puff of his cigarette and lowers his eyes. “They won’t let me in. They think she might’ve come down with whatever this new plague is,” he says. His voice is quiet, but I can hear an undercurrent of frustration and anger. “They’ve already run tests on me and the other Patriots. Tess is the only one who didn’t come up clean.”
Tess bats away one of the lab techs’ hands, then stumbles backward as if she’s having trouble keeping her balance. Sweat forms on her forehead and drips down her neck. The whites of her eyes have a sickly yellow tint to them, and when I look closely, I can tell that she’s squinting in an effort to see everything around her—something that reminds me of her nearsightedness, the way she used to squint at the streets of Lake. Her hands are trembling. I swallow hard at the sight. The Patriots couldn’t have been exposed for long to the Colonies soldiers, but apparently it was long enough for some soldier carrying the virus to pass it to one of them. It’s also a very real possibility that the Colonies are purposefully spreading the disease right back to us, now that they’re in our territory. My insides turn cold as I remember a line from Metias’s old journals: One day we’ll create a virus that no one will be able to stop. And that just might bring about the downfall of the entire Republic.
One of the lab techs turns to me and offers a quick explanation. “The virus looks like a mutation of one of our past plague experiments,” she says, shooting Day a nervous glance (he must have given her a hard time about this earlier) before continuing. “As far as we can tell from the statistics the Colonies have released, the virus seems to have a low uptake rate among healthy adults, but when it does infect someone, the disease progresses rapidly and the fatality rate is very high. We’re seeing infection-to-death times of about a week.” She turns momentarily to Tess on the other side of the glass. “She’s showing some early symptoms—fever, dizziness, jaundice, and the symptom that points us to one of our own manufactured viruses, temporary or possibly permanent blindness.”
Beside me, Day clenches his crutches so hard that his knuckles look white. Knowing him, I wonder whether he’s already had several fights with the lab techs, trying to force his way in to see her or scream at them to leave her alone. I know he must be picturing Eden right now, with his purple, half-blind eyes, and in this moment a deep hatred for the former Republic fills my chest. My father had worked behind those experimental lab doors. He had tried to quit once he found out what they were actually doing with all those local LA plagues, and he gave his life as a result. Is that country really behind us now? Can our reputation ever change in the eyes of the outside world—or of the Colonies?
“She tried to save Frankie,” Day whispers, his eyes still fixed on Tess. “She’d made it back inside the Armor right after we did. I thought Thomas was going to kill her.” His voice turns bitter. “But maybe she’s already marked for death.”
