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“Please tell me you killed it—that you fucking burned it!”
“We’re getting there. I had Atticus look at his computer, but the system is so advanced, he’s having a tough time cracking it.”
I glance over at Atty, who’s a certifiable genius.
He shrugs. “I guess you could say it’s Fort Knox, if Fort Knox could disappear and materialize elsewhere.”
“I need to know what this means.”
“I think this is how the apocalypse started,” Cole says, his voice somber. “It started here.”
“Aren’t there other outposts, though?”
Cole nods. “Yep, which means we have a lot of questions and a lot more worries.”
“What are our options?”
“We took our communication with the other outposts down when we took this one over. We could open up the lines and see what’s going on out there,” Cole reasons.
Everyone in the room knows that’s a bad idea. Every outpost had teams like ours, men trained in combat. Giving them any more information about our situation than we have to is a mistake.
“Or,” Cole continues, “we could keep on going, business as usual, and hope like hell none of the other outposts release it into the animal population.”
“Tell me we have a better option than that…”
“There is one, but you won’t like it.”
All at once, it hits me.
“You want to negotiate with the bastard that beat Suki,” I say as more a statement-of-fact than a question.
“Do you blame me?”
“Aren’t there others left from when we took this place over? Wasn’t there that other scientist?”
“That guy disappeared, which is a fucking worry now. Most of the others were very low-level, and wouldn’t know their way around a lab. They’ll be questioned, but I doubt they know anything.”
A part of me wants to rip Cole’s head off, but I’m well aware there’s something bigger at play. How can I keep Suki and the boys safe when there’s the potential for a biological bomb to go off?
“So you’re going to parlay with the mad scientist?”
“Yep, and depending on what he says, we might have to take additional action.”
“Like what?”
“We may have to close off the Keep. No one comes in. No one leaves. We can stay down here for decades, and we might have to.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“Before we knew there was the possibility of animal infection, I’d had it in my mind that we wouldn’t be down here forever. Now..fuck…we’re out of good options.”
He’s right. We could get attacked out of nowhere and have our food supply tainted.
But closing the Keep would be fucking crazy.
“We can’t close the Keep,” I insist. “The men without mates would be furious, and if we take in the Vultures, there’d be at least two hundred men and only a handful of women.”
“Which would be a recipe for disaster,” Gage adds.
