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“Same here,” I said to Matt. “Let us know if you need anything.”
“Will do.”
I returned the radio to its original position and faced Drav.
“Sorry again for the interruption. Molev’s urgency to finish this wall means we don’t have much time. He hasn’t been wrong yet. And getting any kind of update from out there will help us if we know what’s actually coming our way.”
Drav smiled. “Molev is the oldest of us because he listened to his instincts. I will send someone to you if Matt receives a reply from the new message.”
“Thanks.”
Rather than return to the empty house, I headed to Eitri’s to check on the research team. I knocked softly again but didn’t need to wait as long.
“Hi, Eitri,” I said. “Is anyone awake?”
“Yes. Many are. They run tests and nap while waiting for results.”
I followed him downstairs and found the doctor studying an image on a monitor. It wasn’t the only monitor on. The amount of light flooding the basement had me looking around. When I’d first arrived at Tolerance, I’d noticed all the solar panels and had asked about the on-the-grid electric. There wasn’t any in the subdivision. Not anymore. Only the solar panels on each house.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” the doctor asked.
“Yeah. I’d heard they added the solar panels to the homes on their own. I wouldn’t have thought they had the battery banks big enough to supply this much power,” I said.
“Oh. That. Yes, we needed to make some modifications. The woman who was studying electrical knew how to help us. It was a very smart move to ask them to learn useful skills. But I was actually talking about this,” she said, tapping the monitor.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Infected blood. It’s a sample from Adam. Now look at this one.”
She switched the view to something that looked the same but different. Adam’s sample had been bigger blobs of darkness. At least, that’s how it had looked to me. The new view was of one and lighter red smaller blobs.
“Do you see the difference?”
“One’s bigger and darker, and one’s smaller and redder.”
“Look again,” she said.
She switched back to the dark view and zoomed in so close that I saw an extreme magnification of the edge of one of the blobs. It quivered so slightly it was almost imperceptible.
“Now you see it? I thought it was vibrations from the table or something. But look at this.” She switched the view to another line. It didn’t move. “That’s my blood. I haven’t had any sexual contact with a fey.” She switched views again. “This sample is Eden’s. She’s the female with the longest history of sexual contact without pregnancy. I’ve compared hers to Mya’s and Angel’s and baby Daisy’s. None of them have that vibration that Adam’s blood has.”
She tore her gaze from the screen and looked at me.
“I haven’t determined what’s causing it. Yet. But I think that it’s a piece to the infection puzzle.”
“Have you found anything in their samples from Mya, Angel, and the baby to help create a vaccine?” I asked.
“Ah, that’s interesting too.”
She showed me more slides, pointing out differences she only seemed to see. Then a slide of semen. Through all the science talk, I understood that she was learning a lot from the couples who’d volunteered to have sex.
“We’ve isolated the proteins that hold the cure to the infection and now understand the method in which the body can safely absorb it, and that is the key. Injections won’t work. I have a single female volunteer who is strictly ingesting semen—no vaginal contact—whose samples are showing promise. If you know of any men who would be willing to consume semen, please let me know. I would be very interested in monitoring a male test subject to see if gender plays any role in immunity as well before we even attempt to start up another round of trials.”
“I’ll talk to Molev and see what we can do,” I said. “Meanwhile, Matt Davis over in Tenacity has people on the radio around the clock, trying to make contact with Irwin. Hopefully, they’re having as much luck there as you are here because we need more than a cure. The east coast fell weeks ago. We’ll be the biggest gathering of humans between the two coasts. Even if we can’t turn, we’ll never survive what’s coming if we can’t find a way to stop them.”
She nodded, looking troubled, and as soon as she looked at her screen again, I knew I’d lost her.
Making my way back upstairs, I considered what the doctor had shared with me. They’d found the cure but weren’t sure how to administer it safely or if it would work on men. I doubted it would be easy to find a guy willing to down some fey semen, but only curing a select number of women able to have sex wasn’t an option. We needed a way to mass produce the cure to save everyone who was left.
