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“It’s not outside the realm of possibility,” she answered, opening a door to a conference room.
My stomach churned as Molev and I followed her to the table.
“Waurlyn, you can’t let them do that.”
She looked up from the map already laid flat on the surface.“Why?”
“The hounds were created to bring suffering to my people,” Molev said.“If you use them to create a vaccine, it will not end the way you hope.”
She turned back to the map and gestured to the markers on it.
“The black ones are the ones that have already fallen.The yellow are in the process of evacuation.The white are the forward operating bases that we believe are defensible and necessary.As you can see from all the black markers, nothing is currently going the way we’d hoped, Molev.Your blood isn’t working, and we’re running out of options.”
“Where is Whiteman?”he asked, studying the map.
She looked it over and pointed to a black marker in Missouri.I witnessed a shift in Molev.It was so subtle that, if I hadn’t been watching him, I might not have noticed.But the news deeply impacted him.
I reached out, briefly touching his arm.“Whiteman went dark around the time we left Irwin.Going dark just means they stopped sending transmissions at their assigned time.If you were at Whiteman when we met, then that marker shouldn’t mean anything because it was there before you left.”
“When I left, there were many survivors,” Molev said.“Matt Davis was in charge, but he is not part of your military.He told Mya that the previous leader ended his life after an attack.”
“That makes sense then.Matt wouldn’t have known when to send a transmission or on what channel,” Waurlyn said.“There’s no reason to believe anything has changed since you’ve left.”
He studied all the other black dots.I wondered if he was as surprised as I was by the number of them.The ones in the Midwest, starting from Texas and going north to Illinois, were dark.Wisconsin and Minnesota still had a few yellow.Most of the markers near the east and west were yellow as well, but the ones behind the mountain ranges were white.
Were we putting too much faith in the mountains to keep us safe?The watchtower near Loveland had already fallen once.How long until it fell again?
“I would be foolish to think nothing has changed when over half the bases have fallen since I left,” Molev said.“I have seen how the infected are evolving.They are growing smarter.If we do not want more black markers, we need to grow smarter too.”
“What do you have in mind?”Waurlyn asked.
He gestured to the chairs, pulling out one for me.“There is much you do not know.”
Waurlyn listened attentively for the next twenty minutes as he explained the caves, how the fey had been trapped there, and what had created the hounds.Disbelief flickered across her expression when he explained how they’d discovered that a hound’s heart was the key to its death.When he finished, she sat in silence for a moment.
“That’s a lot to take in,” she said finally.
“Magic doesn’t exist,” I said.“We all know that.But we also knew that fey weren’t any more real than dogs with glowing red eyes that can live even after their heart is removed, and look at where we are now.”
Waurlyn nodded slightly, a wry smile on her lips.“Very true.”
“Do you now understand why you cannot use the hounds?”Molev asked.“They are corrupted by the curse placed on us.It would be unwise to trust anything that comes from them.”
“I understand,” she said.“And I will do my best to convince everyone else.But we’re desperate for answers.”
“And desperate people do desperate things,” I said.
“Unfortunately,” she said in agreement.
“How are the vaccines failing?”Molev asked.
She considered us for a moment and motioned for us to follow her.
“It’ll be easier to show you.”
She led us to an elevator that went down to the basement level.When the door opened, I saw two soldiers stationed on the opposite side of the hall.Two more waited around the corner.No one stopped us, but they all stared at Molev.
Waurlyn used an ID card from her pocket to open another set of secured doors.People in lab coats sat or stood at workstations with equipment I had no names for.Beyond them, I spotted another set of doors and heavily armed guards.
