Fever (11 page)

            Johnny shakes his head with a kind of grim solemnity that doesn’t fit with a child’s body. “My body wouldn’t take it. In the state I’m in, the dissolution process would probably destroy me completely.”

            It’s my turn to squeeze Johnny’s hand. “We need you, John. Do you think any of us has the knowledge to deal with this without you?”

            “You need the cure,” Johnny insists. “You can find that without me. I’ve been thinking about this. I’ve had… plenty of time to think, laying here. We know that the Fever in our time can be traced back to the apocalypse now. We’re here, Celestra. This is the moment. If you can find what causes it, the rest doesn’t matter.”

            “So I just have to find the cause of the Fever?” I ask. “I thought I had to stop the apocalypse?”

            “It’s too late for that now,” Johnny points out, and I wince slightly. “No, don’t blame yourself. I’m just saying that you need to focus on the cure, not on things that can {ingJohnny poi’t be changed. Finding the cause of the Fever should be easier. After all, what is big enough to cause an epidemic thousands of years in the future?”

            “I don’t know,” I admit. There are other things I know I need to ask him. Right now, looking at him, I can’t hold back. Even though I know Johnny is healing, because he can’t come back with us, it feels more like he’s dying, and I can’t leave anything unsaid. “There are creatures out there, Johnny. Things that were huge, and they looked like they were part human, part reptile. It was worse than that though. They had abilities. Abilities that were like
mine
, Johnny. They could burn people.”

            Johnny reaches out towards a table beside the bed, where there’s a pad of paper and a pencil. He’s too weak to get it for himself, so Grayson has to pass it to him. He draws for almost a minute before showing me what is obviously the same kind of creature as the one that chased Jack and me.

            “Like this?” he asks.

            I nod. “How did you know?”

            “I had theories,” Johnny says, “but back in the future, there wasn’t enough evidence. It was almost… inconceivable. But the monster you saw… we had reports of them before the Fever hit our time.”

            “I didn’t see those reports,” I say.

            “Like I said, there wasn’t any proof. They said that these creatures bit people, but I couldn’t find the bite marks. I thought it was just made up.”

            “People would run,” Grayson says. “They wouldn’t let something like that near enough to bite them.”

            “They’re smaller in the future,” Johnny says. “And people don’t notice small things. Same thing about the way bubonic plague spread with rats. Maybe they don’t even need to bite people. It’s just a hypothesis. No, not even that, really. Just a guess.”

            Grayson looks thoughtful. “So, if we could eliminate these things now…”

            “In theory, it would stop the Fever in the future,” Johnny says. “Easy.”

            “Except for the part where they’re ten feet tall and nearly unstoppable,” I say.

            “How do they get to be so much smaller in the future?” Grayson asks. “I wouldn’t have thought that being smaller would be an evolutionary advantage.”

            Johnny shrugs {Joh

            “What about the burning?” I ask.

            “Environmental conditions may have triggered that,” Johnny says. “It isn’t necessarily significant.”

            “It was the experiments we did, combined with the solar storm.”

            I turn to see that Dr. Florence has come into the room, along with Sebastian Cook and Jack.

            “These creatures were part of your experiments?” I say. “I thought you experimented on people with brain issues?”

            “We kept reptiles and large insects for experiments which were too dangerous for humans,” Dr. Florence explains. “The simpler way their brain works even compared to most mammals means that we were able to explore certain aspects more directly, including looking into some diseases that for obvious reasons we couldn’t introduce to human hosts.”

            “So the Fever could be a mutation of one of those diseases?” Grayson asks. “And the creatures we saw…”

            “They could be a combination of the creatures we used for our experiments and some of the humans we brought in for them,” Dr. Florence admits. “I’m sorry. We really were trying to help people.”

            “How?” I ask. “What exactly were you trying to do to those people?”

            “They had memory lapses,” Dr. Florence explains. “Blackouts. Lost time. Most of them, when they became emotional, wouldn’t have the rational control over it that you or I would have. They would simply act on whatever they felt immediately. It could make them violent, in many cases. Even in the mildest cases, they have limited attention spans.”

            “My parents thought that I had ADD when I was young,” I say, remembering. “I couldn’t concentrate well then. That just made me frustrated. Angry. It was only when I started running… running helped me to deal with it.”

            “You aren’t the same as them,” Jack says, moving closer to me.

            “Aren’t I?” I look to Dr. Florence. “Aren’t I the kind of person you would have experimented on?”

            “The kind of person we would have tri {oulp alied to help, Celes,” Dr. Florence says. “And yes, you would have fallen at the milder end of that spectrum, only it sounds like you found an outlet that allowed you to deal with those problems in a more constructive manner.”

            “You’re Dr. Florence. The scientist involved in my fa… Senator Hammond’s experiments on people?”

            “What do you know about that?” Dr. Florence asks. He sounds worried.

            “My father wanted me to go there,” Johnny says. “He wanted to alter my memories and strange behavior, until he found out about the Fading technology. He thought you might be able to cure me of this.”

            “That might have been how he started,” Dr. Florence says, “but it didn’t finish up like that. By the end, he wanted me to kill everyone there.”

            Johnny looks shocked by that. I reach down to squeeze his hand.

            “It’s okay, Johnny. I know that Wilson Hammond is one of our targets, but he’s also your father in this time. The trouble is, he isn’t what you want him to be. He was the one who was able to bring down the fire storm to start the apocalypse. He’s the one who brought all this down on us. I think, if there was ever anything good in him, it’s gone now.”

            “I…” Johnny’s look of shock turns to one of horror, and I wish I could hug him, but with the burns, it simply wouldn’t be safe.

            “Johnny, you deserve to know this,” I say. “Hammond isn’t a good man. Be ready to run and fight if he comes for you. He’s not the man you grew up with, and he isn’t interested in your well-being anymore. He’s the beast. The one who brings the apocalypse. We can’t trust him, and we have to try to stop what he’s doing. You understand that, don’t you?”

            Johnny looks down and sighs. “I’m not a kid, Celes. Well, no, that’s the problem. I am a kid. I’m a kid and one of our time’s leading scientific minds at the same time, and it’s enough to tear me apart. You think this is bad for you, Jack, and Grayson? At least you’re yourselves. There are only a few years in it. I… my mind tells me exactly how dangerous Wilson Hammond is, but at the same time, everything in my experience in this body tells me something different. It wants to believe that he’s better than that.”

            “He isn’t. Remember who you really are, Johnny.”

            Johnny looks up at me. “Who are we really, Celes? Are these bodies just covers we can cast aside? They’re real, produced by the machines, but real. We grew to this age the same way kids did, and now we’re expected to put all that aside. How easy are you finding that, Celes?”

            I think about Jack and Grayson then. Grayson, for whom I feel so much, not because I can remember our time together in the future, but because I can remember running with him in high school. Because I can remember him as my first kiss, even though he
wasn’t
. Not really.

            “We can’t let this be personal,” I say, though I’ve already done that. I allowed the apocalypse, after all. “We have to do the job and go home.”

FIFTEEN

S
eeing Johnny like this, hearing him talk about the Fever, I can feel more memories stirring up in my mind. I dive down into them, hoping that they might have answers. I can see myself consulting with a team of scientists, sitting around a table and looking grave.

            “It looks like the southeastern corner of the US was first,” one says, reading from a file, and I can hear myself sigh.

            “Then the East Coast, the West Coast, the middle, everywhere else… it doesn’t help us if we don’t know how it’s spreading.”

            The memory fades, and I’m left looking at Dr. Florence, who is sitting in a corner now while doctors fuss around Johnny.

            “Dr. Florence. What’s the connection between these creatures and people who can manipulate energy?"

            He knows. I’m sure he knows. It’s just a question of finally getting some answers from him.

            “I can tell you more about the condition, but I’m not so sure about the creatures. We know that all those suffering from the impairments we were working on had a very similar biological and neurological makeup. In particular, they tended to have very overactive brain waves. That activity has to be fueled by something.”

            “By what?” I ask.

            “In an immediate way, by the food they eat, the same way all humans are. Yet how does food work? Ultimately, it is a chain leading back to the sun. Plats photosynthesize energy and store it within themselves. Animals eat ~alie re. the plants. Omnivores like humans eat both. At each stage, it is about precious energy from the sun, locked up in different forms.”

            “I don’t see how that helps us to understand what’s going on,” I point out.

             “The solar storm clearly altered their brainwaves to allow them to access that more directly,” Dr. Florence explains.

            “So I don’t need to eat?”

            “I’m not sure it works as simply as that.”

            “Well, how does it make for a connection between the two?” I ask.

            Dr. Florence shrugs. “Well, I suppose the same thing must have happened with the creatures, so possibly, theoretically at least, understanding the brains of those with this condition might allow them to understand the creatures better. As a purely theoretical exercise.”

            “No.” I shake my head and try to remember how I sound in the future. Authoritative. Presidential. “This is
not
a theoretical exercise. We face a mass epidemic in the future, which we call the Fever. Johnny is telling me that these creatures are behind it, and if we don’t get it under control, then the whole of humanity could be wiped out. Does that sound like a theoretical problem to you, Dr. Florence?”

            “I don’t understand what you want me to do,” the scientist says.

            I try to explain. “Our best hope of ridding the world of the Fever in the future is to destroy those creatures now, before they have a chance to spread it. Only they aren’t small pests now. We can’t exactly just step on them and squash them. I’ve been chased by one of these things. They’re fast, they’re powerful, and their skin is tough enough to deflect low caliber bullets. Plus they can burn people. We’d need an army to stop them through straight ahead force.”

            “I still don’t understand what you want from me,” Dr. Florence says.

            I grab him, lifting him out of his seat. It’s a bullying move, but right now, I get the impression that Dr. Florence does his best work when he’s scared. “I need you to find us a weakness in them. Find us a way to strip away their powers, so that we might actually have a chance to end this. Don’t tell me that you can’t do it. After all, you did more than enough research on them for Hammond.”

            Dr. Florence obviously understands the threat there. We haven’t forgotten what he did for Hammond. “I guess… we
could
try to reverse the effects of the solar storm. If we could reverse that, then in theory, we might be able to undo the effects. After all, i. Aw. f that had never happened, then none of what followed would have been a problem.”

            It seems that I’m not the only one capable of reminding people about the past. Guilt weighs down on me again as I think about Wilson Hammond. I let him live. I wouldn’t let Jack kill him, because I thought he could still be saved, and that decision cost millions of people their lives. No matter what Dr. Florence has done in the past, what I’ve done is worse.

            “I wish I had a better answer for you,” Dr. Florence says. “Then we wouldn’t have these…
things
running around killing people. Disintegrating them.”

            “I have that ability,” I say. “If you work on me, would anything you came up with apply to them?”

            “It… might,” Dr. Florence admits.

            “So, if you were to try to reverse my powers, we could come up with a way to weaken these creatures?”

            Dr. Florence looks at me seriously then. “Do you really want to give up such important gifts? They help to make you who you are.”

            I shake my head. “No, they don’t. They don’t define me, and they never have. For years, I was just a girl who liked to run. I didn’t know anything about being able to burn people to death, and I
certainly
don’t want that to be the main thing that defines me.”

            “But you’re willing to risk giving it up.”

            “To save the world?” I almost laugh. “Dr. Florence, there have been days when I wished I never had these abilities. Giving them up to protect people is a
tiny
price to have to pay.”