The Becoming (Book 4): Under Siege (10 page)

Derek rubbed a hand over his face and
sighed. “This will take a recap of the history of Michaluk and what
I’ve deduced about it in my little lab since we moved here, so
please bear with me.”

Derek pushed up from the coffee table and
joined Brandt near the head of the room where he could see them all
clearly. Brandt stepped aside and sat on the arm of the couch
beside Cade.

“I’ve already gone over the
how-it-came-to-be story earlier this year, when I explained that
Brandt was infected and how,” Derek began. “Since then, I’ve made
some new discoveries and begun to come to a better understanding of
how the virus might work. That’s what I’ll share with you
today.”

“What sorts of new discoveries?” Ethan
asked.

“Lots of new discoveries,” Derek said; a
note of excitement edged into his voice. He flipped a few pages in
his notebook and held it where they could all see it.

Ethan leaned forward for a better look,
silently wishing he had his long-lost reading glasses. It appeared
to be a hand-drawn diagram of some sort of cell.

“Let me give you a really basic rundown of
what I’ve discovered. You’ll never believe how exciting it is,”
Derek said.

Isaac raised an eyebrow and gave his
half-brother a strange look. “I’m not sure ‘exciting’ is the word I
would personally use.”

Derek ignored him and continued, sounding
like a kid in a candy store. “The Michaluk Virus isn’t a virus in
the traditional sense. It’s a megavirus. It’s so big I can actually
see it under my microscope, and—”

“Wait, slow down, Doc,” Cade interrupted.
“We’re not all college-educated epidemiologists. What the hell is a
megavirus?”

“It’s almost like a parasite, but not
quite,” Derek clarified. “It’s
complex
. Most regular viruses
are dependent upon the host body they occupy. They hijack cells for
their own purpose. In the case of megaviruses—or
the
megavirus, since there’s only one official megavirus—it has its own
cellular structure. It was only recently discovered because, until
a few years ago, it was mistaken for a bacterium.”

“That’s all fine and great, Derek,” Brandt
said. “But what does that have to do with Michaluk?”

“Because I think Michaluk is a new
megavirus,” Derek explained. “I think when those bastards created
this in the lab, they modeled Michaluk after the megavirus.”

“Basically, the Michaluk megavirus is like a
parasite,” Kimberly spoke up. “Once introduced into a person’s
body, it attacks the Central Nervous System, gets into the brain,
and takes over cells for its own purposes. It shuts down cells it
doesn’t need and takes over the areas that control motor skills and
the brain stem. A virus’s goal is to spread, which is why, I think,
Michaluk victims are so violent. The virus is trying to spread
further by forcing those already infected with it to attack other
people.”

There was a long silence as everyone
processed Kimberly’s explanation. Kimberly, for her part, sat
quietly, gripping Ethan’s hand in hers, and he held on in return,
almost tightly enough to hurt her.

Brandt cleared his throat and gave Dr.
Rivers a pointed look. The doctor fumbled with his notebook before
he flipped through pages. Ethan wondered just how good of a
professor the man was if he couldn’t explain things to them with
confidence, but then he reconsidered: he doubted Derek’s students
glared at him in quite the same way Brandt was currently glaring,
something that would have unnerved
anyone
.

“When we were doing testing of what became
Michaluk in the CDC’s labs, we were given two variants of the
pathogen to work with, designated 228C and 228E. They were the two
most promising of the pathogens available to us. There were three
test groups, A, B, and C. A was the control group, and B and C were
test groups who got the pathogens. You already know this.

“228C was given to group B, which was
Alicia’s group, and 228E was given to group C, which was Brandt’s.
Even though both pathogens showed good results in lab settings, for
most of the subjects…well, it didn’t. Out of the ten subjects in
group B, only Alicia coped well with it, and in group C, Brandt.
What made them different from everyone else—and this is just my
theory—is the pathogen may have modified itself and adapted to
their physiologies. Of course, because it was two different—though
similar—pathogens, it did that in different ways. As we saw earlier
this year, with Alicia, it…well…”

“It fucked up her head,” Ethan supplied,
seeing no need to be polite about it.

“Not quite how I’d have put it, but it’s
rather accurate,” Derek acknowledged. “The pathogen caused bouts of
psychosis and irrationality and at times animalistically aggressive
behavior. She was prone to attacking them, and she often tried to
bite them like an animal would. And it was through her and her
interaction with Kevin Michaluk that we ended up with the first
wild strain of the virus, because we didn’t know it, but 228C had
mutated and become contagious. I’ll call the mutated form of 228C
the Day Strain for simplicity’s sake from here on out. Mr. Michaluk
had a cold when Alicia attacked him. During the attack, she spat in
his face, and he was exposed to the Day Strain through the mucous
membranes of either his eyes or nose. I’m uncertain which, but
ultimately, it doesn’t matter.

“Obviously, 228C was highly adaptive, and
when it encountered the common cold virus that Kevin carried with
him at the time, it attached itself to those viral particles,
twisting them to its benefit. And
that
is how the Michaluk
Strain was born.”

“But Michaluk didn’t stay airborne,” Ethan
pointed out.

“And thank God for that,” Cade muttered. “If
it had, we’d all be dead already.”

“You’re right,” Derek acknowledged. “It only
stayed airborne long enough to penetrate a variety of host
defenses, to get started on its spread. Then it ditched the cold
virus, likely because it had served its purpose, and because the
cold virus wasn’t long-lived enough. From then on, it became
transmitted by fluid only.”

“Okay, so?” Isaac prompted.

Brandt spoke up. “So when the airborne
characteristics were dropped by the Michaluk Strain, it just became
the Day Strain again, right, Doc?”

“Not exactly,” Derek replied. “It kept some
of the characteristics and, as such, is different enough to be
considered a separate strain, one that’s more contagious. And
that’s how we get to the Evans Strain.

“The strain that Brandt is infected with
isn’t contagious. It also appears to be the strongest and most
resilient of the three strains. If you introduce the Day or
Michaluk Strains into its territory, it activates and wipes them
out. Then it goes dormant again until such time as it’s needed.
It’s essentially a helper virus, which was what it was intended for
all along. Mind you, he’s still infected, but he’s not contagious.
The fact that he can sleep with Cade and Cade not feel ill effects
tells me that much.”

“Would you
please
get to a point,
preferably sometime today?” Brandt groaned, rubbing his temples
with his thumb and middle finger.

“I’m getting there,” Derek said, the
excitement in his voice sliding into a plea. “I promise.” He
paused, as if recollecting his thoughts, and then turned to face
Ethan. “When you were initially infected, Ethan, you contracted the
Michaluk Strain of the virus. The treatment I’d developed at the
Westin to combat that strain and that I gave you and Remy and
others like you was developed with the Day Strain as the base. It’s
why you were still infectious while you were giving yourself daily
injections. The Day Strain, while stronger than the Michaluk
Strain, couldn’t completely dominate it. It’s like you were a
cancer patient on the cusp of remission, and then you stopped
taking your chemotherapy.”

“Basically, we were fighting a poison with
another poison,” Kimberly interjected.

“The Day Strain is the least permanent of
the viral strains,” Derek added. “It’s why there was only
one
person infected with the Day Strain—Alicia—which is why
I think it’s an endangered strain. Anyway, when the medications
from the injections wore off you, the Day Strain failed, and the
Michaluk Strain came back full force and took over.”

“So what does the Evans Strain do?” Ethan
asked.

He nodded to Ethan but addressed Brandt and
Cade. “When you two brought Ethan to me and asked me to try to do
something for him, I spent two months pumping him full of meds
while I tried to figure out how to pull the pathogen in Brandt’s
blood out of it so I could deconstruct it, so I could figure out
what was so different about it. I couldn’t do it. I didn’t have the
proper equipment. That room down in the basement isn’t a true lab.
I did my best, but nothing worked, and believe me, I tried every
trick I knew and a few I wasn’t aware I knew.” He sighed. “I got
desperate. I didn’t want to break the news to you that we would
have to kill Ethan. We couldn’t keep up what we were doing. He was
already getting more violent. The animal meat we were feeding him
wasn’t doing a lick of good and wasn’t eradicating his hunger for
human flesh. Which was when I gave up and injected Brandt’s blood
directly into Ethan’s bloodstream. And that’s how I discovered that
the Evans Strain can wipe out the Michaluk Strain.” He folded his
arms over his chest. “And that it can replace the Michaluk Strain
with itself.”

“Which means?” Ethan prodded. “Break it down
for me, please?”

“As far as I can tell, if you were to be
bitten by one of the infected today, you wouldn’t get infected,”
Derek said. “You may feel ill for a day or two while the Evans
Strain fights it off, but ultimately, it’d win out against the
intruder, and you’d come out of it uninfected by the more dangerous
strains.”

Ethan seemed to be considering all this.
Everyone in the room stared at Brandt as if he were a museum
exhibit as he held Cade’s hand.

“It’s a vaccine,” Ethan said. “You’ve found
a vaccine against the Michaluk Virus. You could conceivably give it
to everyone here and it’d keep them from getting infected.”

“Conceivably,” Derek acknowledged. “But I
won’t do it, not yet.”

Ethan gaped at him and tried to rise out of
his recliner. “Why the hell not?” he demanded. “It could save so
many people—”

“Because I don’t know if it’s safe,” Derek
said. “I don’t know what the side effects are—and there
are
side effects, if what happened in the kitchen earlier is any
indication. And because I don’t know if I just got lucky with you
or if it’s a sure thing, I’m not subjecting anyone to anything that
isn’t a sure thing. I don’t know what I’d do if something went
wrong.”

Ethan sank back into his recliner. The
doctor’s point was one he could understand, as much as he hated to
agree with Derek in the face of humanity’s possible salvation. He
tried to focus on the other problem facing the group, the reason
the meeting had been called in the first place. “What about
Remy?”

“The fact of the matter is that the only
combination that remains untested is the Evans and Day Strains,”
Derek said. “I don’t know what’ll happen if they come into contact
with each other. They’re both essentially lab-pure strains, and
they’ve already shown they can be unpredictable, the Day Strain in
particular.”

“It’s why we need to roll Remy off the
medications we’re giving her before we inject her with the Evans
Strain,” Kimberly said. “We’re predicting that if we take her off
the medications, the Michaluk Strain that’s being subdued by the
Day Strain will make a resurgence, and when we introduce the Evans
Strain into her bloodstream, it’ll behave as it has with
Ethan.”

“That’s the best case scenario,” Derek said.
“I’ve already explained this to her. She got very ugly with me and
has refused to talk to me since, even to answer questions about how
she feels during exams. Obviously, she isn’t taking this well.” He
turned to Ethan with a solemn look on his face. “Which is why I’m
going to ask you to please try to talk to her about it. The last
thing I need is her to go off and do something stupid because she
doesn’t like what she’s hearing.”

“So you told her she’s going to have to turn
before you do anything for her?” Ethan asked. “Doc, that was a bad,
bad move. You have no idea how she feels toward the infected. It’s
like every single one of them has done something personal against
her, and she’s not going to take kindly to becoming one, even if
only for a short time. I think she’d kill herself before she’d let
that happen.”

“That’s why I’m bringing it up now,” Derek
said. “You understand her psychology. You’ve known her far longer
than I have and, as far as I understand, you’ve had…romantic
entanglements with her. She’ll listen to you.”

“
Had,
” Ethan pointed out, not liking
the turn in the conversation, especially with Kimberly sitting
beside him. “She’s obviously less than thrilled with the idea of
seeing or speaking to me, in case you haven’t noticed. She didn’t
once come to see me while I was bedbound. She doesn’t want anything
to do with me.”

“And why is that?”

“
Because I tried to kill her!
” Ethan
exploded, coming halfway off his seat again and digging his fingers
into the armrests. Brandt started to stand, but Cade pulled him
back and shook her head.

“You can work around that, can’t you?” Derek
asked.

“Oh my
God,
” Ethan groaned. He
flopped into the recliner and dropped his head back against the
headrest. “I can’t just
work around
that. Remy doesn’t
function that way. You’d never believe the way that woman holds
onto a grudge.”

“Why do you think I’ve brought it up, and
especially to you?” Derek asked. “Because you know how to handle
her.”