Storm (14 page)

“Eight mils,” says the professor, shaking his head.

“Anything we can do for you?” asks Thurley.

“Find a cure?” says the professor. He laughs a bitter laugh and peels off his glove.

“It's
in
him, for
's sake,” someone says. “You can't just chop off his hand.”

“Aware of that,” says Thurley. “Go and get some
morphine.”

The someone stomps out of the room at high speed.

Everyone else just stands around, looking at Beardy's hand.

I'm too far away to see properly, but I swear there's hardly a scratch on it. It's not as though he's bleeding to death in front of us or something…but the room falls completely silent.

It must be clawing its wiggly-tentacled way through his veins, through his arteries. Gorging on what it wants—the food of red blood cells—that's what everyone got told when the rain first fell. The too-late Emergency Public Service Broadcast told us: it eats human blood cells. It wants the iron. Inside Professor Beardy, it is already replicating, replicating, replicating—smacking its greedy bacteria lips, spurting out living selfies, and chowing down for more.

He has a first-class ticket to death. They are just waiting for the professor to die.

I cannot stand it. I cannot stand a single thing about any of this thing. I go back to watching
Scooby-Doo
.

After a short while, the professor speaks…in a most un-professorly way:

“It's a
phage,” he says. “I
told you. I told you it
could be. I
told you, I
bet you
anything it's a
phage.
.”

Phage
. That's not a word I've heard before, but I'm guessing other people have. They just don't seem to believe him. In the silence, people are pulling these scrunched-up don't-know-about-that faces—apart from the snarler, who looks totally, seriously
off.

Apparently, Beardy is not dying. Not at all. He punches the air—with his needle-stabbed hand.

“It's a
phage!”

I get left alone for most of the rest of that day. This in itself is fairly shocking and weird because I haven't actually been left alone since I got picked up off the tarmac and dragged in here. There has always—always—been someone in the room. Being alone there feels strange enough to be frightening. I don't like it. They check on me (“How are you doing, Ruby?” “I'm fine, thank you.”) and they come to give me food, but I don't want anything to eat.

“Is that guy OK?” I manage to ask them.

“Oh, yes,” one of the nurses says, like she's sick of the whole thing already.

“Well, did he—is there a cure now and stuff? He seemed kind of excited.”

“Didn't he just.”

I'm guessing it's no to a cure, then, or else surely everyone would be jumping for joy—and even more surely SOMEONE WOULD HAVE TOLD ME. But maybe, under the circumstances (apocalypse), it's better to check, not guess.

“Well, is there?” I ask.

The nurse shrugs. “He's a little
away with the fairies
, that one,” she says.

I know she means she thinks he's crazy, but that makes me smile in a sad way, because it makes me think about my mom, who whispered on about fairies to me so much I believed in them with all my heart. Where are they now? Sipping nectar from acorn teacups as they discuss science with Professor Beardy?

I put the TV on and watch it with the sound turned right up. I want the noise to blast every thought from my head. I don't want to think—about anything at all, fairies included. And most especially not about my family, because even the very edge of a thought about them being
sampled
makes me white-hot sick with angry disgust.

I concentrate on feeling numb. Numb's OK.

The next morning, when the nurses come, they're dressed how nurses normally dress. All the scary bio-garb stuff…it has gone.

No one told me this was going to happen, no one explains why it is happening, and it has quite a peculiar effect on me. I could sort of detach myself from the hideousness of it all until I got to see their faces…because, their faces? They're not just NORMAL; they're actually pretty cheerful. I had thought the attempts at the happy “And how are we?” voices were just that—attempts to make the being poked around marginally less completely dreadful…but no. These people have gone back to how they seemed when I first arrived. They are actually fairly
chirpy.

This, instantly,
me right off.

“Excuse me?” I start up, as they start taking my cage apart around me. “What's going on?”

“We don't know,” says a nurse.

Yeah, right. Did you catch that 0.1 micrometers of a second delay before she said that?

Something is up and I don't like it. What I also don't like is…seeing all these people looking normal, carrying on like normal. I realize all over again how not normal I am. And I realize how
angry
I am about it. And how sick I am of being treated like a moron/child (these are the same thing to these people).

I am a freak with
attitude
.

It starts with a huffy sigh or two and ends with me refusing breakfast. I now haven't eaten for twenty-four hours. This doesn't seem to cause any great alarm, which annoys me even more.

Don't get annoyed
, I beg myself.

off
, myself swears back.

This is a state I have never quite been in before. I mean, I've talked to myself plenty. I've tried to make myself think positive thoughts a billion times—and when that failed, I learned to unthink the negative ones. And when that failed, I wallowed…but I have never been like this: swearing, angrily, at myself. My head feels…like a hurricane, gathering itself, gathering everything around it. Getting ready to just—

“Don't get annoyed,” I beg myself out loud.

When Dr. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB—who is also about the only one who doesn't seem particularly cheerful—arrives, she notices the hurricane. Big time.

Sans
spacesuit, she's the only one not doing the whole white coat/uniform thing. It doesn't make me like her more. She wears a different kind of suit: dull, but business-y, like she's going to work in a bank or something. And her nails and her makeup and her hair—all of it—while not exactly glamorous, are super-perfect.

I feel angry at the sight of her. I feel like a total “UG!” cavewoman scruffbag. I'm still wearing the stupid gown that shows my butt (in BIG, BAGGY, FLOWERY hospital-issue underwear) to everyone.

“Is there something wrong, Ruby?” she asks about ten nanoseconds after she's walked into the room—which has been enough time for me to think all those things about her, but not enough time to think what scathing words I might wish to speak upon the subject.

“Nope.”

“Are you still upset about what happened yesterday?”

“Nope.”

“Would you like to talk about it anyway, Ruby?”

“Nope.”

“Is there something else you'd like to talk about?”

“Nope.”

“I expect you're wondering where everyone is…”

I can't “Nope” this, because I am.

“What you need to know is that we are working very hard indeed to find a cure here, Ruby. And you are such an important part of that. You are
the
most important part. We are
so
grateful to you, Ruby. So grateful! Everyone thinks you are
brilliant
.”

Ha! It takes me a few moments to get my head around what's going on, because, basically, no one has ever spoken to me like this in my entire life. And man! She's good at it! I could almost believe it myself. I mean, obviously it's true in all sorts of ways but—HA!—I realize a thing. I realize that Dr. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB thinks I'm going to snap out of it if she keeps this up. I don't blame her for thinking that—apart from yesterday's outburst of rage, she has only seen a silent, sniveling shadow of a girl. The sort of girl who'd suck this stuff up and then ask politely for a spoon to scrape the bowl with.

“…because what you have to understand is that you are really, really special to us. You are really special and important and…”

I am tempted to let this go on. This is the apocalypse. Everyone could do with a bit of praise—take what you can where you can get it, huh?—but I have the most hideous feeling this particular praise is being laid on too thick. It is being laid on with a knife. I am being buttered up. For what? I don't know and I don't care.

“…yes, everyone—
everyone
—here wants what you want.”

I doubt that. I mean, obviously, I'm not some total loon like Xar. Obviously, I would be delighted if there was a cure. How could I not be? But, also obviously, what I want, really, is to have my life back. (“And then I woke up.”) Obviously that is not a possibility. So, failing that, I'd just like…to get out of here. That would be good. To at least get
some kind
of a life again. I hate this place. A whole lot less obviously I…

“I want to know what's going on,” I tell her.

For the first time in my life, I really, really want to understand something. I don't want to be palmed off. I want to know.

“I want to know why I'm a freak.”

“Oh, Ruby, we would never call you that! That's not what you are!” Dr. TVSOYMMSTTVCOMB coos.

“I want to know what a
phage
is,” I tell her.

She pauses. I see her brain behind her eyes. I see it calculating stuff. I step it up:

“That's what I've got, isn't it? A
phage
. What is that?”

The calculation is complex for her, I can tell.

“I think I've got a right to know,” I say.

I am immediately scared I have blown it. Teenager + rights = NO.

I try to fix it: “I just want to understand,” I say softly.

“We would too,” she says, calculating.

She arrives at her answer.