Page 58 of The Godhead Complex
“Get everybody inside!” he shouted. The last thing he needed was someone falling overboard. Orange scrambled to get the islanders and Roxy away from the railings and below deck. Despite Minho’s best efforts to steer to the center of the channel, theMaze Cutterhit something beneath. An ominous sound rumbled and groaned and scraped.
Minho looked desperately at Orange and she nodded.
She ran downstairs to check on things and came back within thirty seconds. “Yeah. We’re taking on water.”
“What do we do?” Dominic trailed right behind her.
Minho took the ship back up to ten knots, no longer caring about damage. Only speed. “Grab your stuff; we’re docking farther south than we planned.”
“My assistant will take you to the lower level,” Morgan said. Old Man Frypan still couldn’t take his eyes off the black curtain covering the corner pod, but Isaac was more concerned with the look on the young assistant’s face. The fire in her eyes hadn’t calmed down a bit from the day before.
“And that’s where Cowan is?” The assistant only stared at him as if he were responsible for killing her dog or something. And then she walked away.
Morgan motioned for Isaac to follow the angry girl. “Cowan is in a separate safety pod on the lower level. You’ll be able to talk with her through the glass.” Isaac pulled Frypan’s sleeve to break his stare from what haunted the old man behind the curtain. He snapped out of his trance and they caught up to the assistant. Isaac didn’t care what they called the glass rooms, they weren’t for safety. They were cells. He and Frypan didn’t have a plan beyond telling Cowan what they’d learned about her illness and the folded-up Griever they’d seen—or hadn’t.
“We’ll see you for the dispensing this afternoon,” Morgan shouted after them.
“Dispensing? What’s that mean?” The assistant did not respond. She didn’t even turn around. He and Frypan could barely keep up with her. For a second Isaac thought he saw a braided grass bracelet sticking out of her back pocket, along with a knife, but it couldn’t have been. Couldn’t. He rubbed his empty wrist.
The young woman led the two of them down a hallway, down a stairway, then another hallway before reaching a room with several glass pods like the one they had been in. Isaac exchanged glances with Frypan. There were at least a dozen of them, all empty except the one that held a very pale Ms. Cowan. She looked even worse than before. The layout of the bottom floor was almost identical to the lab upstairs; Isaac scanned the corners but there were no pods with black cloths hiding Grievers behind them. Grievers. He had to tell Cowan.
“Why’s it gotta be in the basement? Nothing good happens underground,” Old Man Frypan muttered as he glared at all the pods within the room. The assistant went to the next pod over to set up cots.
“Isaac, Frypan! Where’s Jackie?!” Cowan shouted through the glass as soon as she saw them. Isaac couldn’t tell if it was the lighting in the Villa or the stress on Cowan’s body, but the skin around her eyes looked almost purple.
Isaac spoke loudly to ensure she could hear him. “Jackie’s going to be okay. They’ve got her detoxing from a deadly bacteria the newt had on its skin.” He examined Cowan’s setup. They’d given her a bed and several buckets. She was hooked up to an IV.
“Oh. That's all it was . . . the newt?” Cowan rubbed her face. “I’m glad she’ll be okay.”
“Us, too.” Isaac nodded, but he had bigger things he needed to discuss with Sadina’s mom before the grumpy assistant made him and Frypan move to their separate safety pods. “Ms. Cowan,” he said through the glass, “we need you to come clean with us. With Old Man Frypan, here.” Isaac didn’t want to have to tell Frypan about Kletter using the other kids as tests too. But with Cowan’s illness and possible exposure to something so rare, they all needed to be on the same page. “It’s not just about Sadina’s blood . . .”
Cowan’s chin dipped and she seemed ready to pass out. “I’m so sorry, Frypan. I never intended for you to get wrapped up in this,” she coughed, “but Kletter’s request went beyond just our family’s bloodline, it was for as many bloodlines as we could escape the island with.” The way Cowan said it,escaping the island, confused Isaac. The island was their home, they didn’t need to run from anything there. This, now, here is what they needed to escape. He could only dismiss it as the sickness moving through her, confusing her, but she sounded like she’d been brainwashed or something.
“I know,” Frypan said nonchalantly. This shocked not just Ms. Cowan but Isaac, too.
“You knew?” Isaac asked.
“What?” he chuckled, “I might be older than mung beans but I knew this wasn’t just an off-island adventure for the Cure. As soon as we arrived at the Safe Haven all those decades ago, I knew that one day, someone would come looking for us. It was never going to be over, till it was over.”
Cowan piped in, weakly. “It’s still about the Cure. There was never anything nefarious other than lying to Congress and omitting some of the intentions. Having the potential use of control subjects within the same family bloodline if we needed them back on the island.” Cowan coughed for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last few minutes. “But the Cure is the goal. Hear me? We owe it to the rest of the world to—” She coughed herself right into a fit until she hacked up liquid into a bucket.
Isaac couldn’t tell if it had come from her lungs or her stomach, but either way, it wasn’t good.
Isaac watched the sullen assistant open up the second pod and prepare it. “Ms. Cowan, did Kletter give you anything? Did she test something on you that you might have had a reaction to?” He looked back at Frypan to gauge how much he should tell her. The way Cowan blinked slower and slower, Isaac wasn’t sure they should bother her with the threat of a machine upstairs that may or may not be a Griever.
Cowan seemed to be searching her memory. “I tested the sleeping substance before using it on the crowd at the amphitheater. Do you think . . . I had a reaction to that, it was so long ago though?”
Isaac questioned Frypan but he shook his head. “No. It wouldn’t have been that. But, is it possible that she gave you something else while you were asleep?”
Cowan coughed again. “No.”
“Maybe testing to see how it would react with a part of Sadina’s blood?” Frypan asked as Isaac watched the assistant walk back over to them, dragging heavy feet.
“Kletter?” Cowan’s purple-hued eyelids blinked. “You think she gave me something else when I was asleep?” She grabbed her head.
“Annie Kletter was a thief and a liar,” the assistant finally spoke. Her eyes widened as if she dared anyone to correct her. “Is that why you killed her?”
“Annie?” Isaac had never known Kletter’s first name, but for some reasonAnniedidn’t fit. It was too nice of a name for that woman.
