Page 117 of The Hero Within
"Oh, everyone in the Confederacy can do it, can they?"
He smiled at her. "Computers always made sense to me, Miss McClain. Spent a lot of time locked up in juvenile detention, and there was a guy in there who knew code. Taught me a little. He was pure genius, and when we got out…. Well, the Confederacy likes to say all its citizens are equal, but they’re really not. I wanted to feed myself and didn’t want to end up back in juvie, so I had to learn how to get credit." He waggled his fingers. "I can steal everything that’s not nailed down with a touch of my datapad."
"Mayhew," Arik called. "Another locked door. You’re up."
The labs were all locked down for the night, with bulletproof doors at certain intervals. Mayhew cracked them, one after the other, until they were in Wing C. A sign on the wall said Infectious Diseases.
Mayhew examined the map he’d pulled up on his screen. "Gold mine." He pointed to a door. "This one."
The door gave with a hiss, leading into a sterile laboratory. Rows of fridges with glass fronts lined the walls. She could see hundreds of vials within them, labeled neatly and barcoded. And a certain sort of breathlessness went through her. A giddyyou did it. Victory. Relief. She could save Lily. She could save Ian and all the others of Absolution who were inflicted with the salt plague. A thousand furious emotions pressing in on her from the inside out, and—
"What the hell?"
Eden slammed to a halt as a man's voice broke through the room.
It went through her, thin as a sharpened stiletto.
A cut. A slice.
Miles Wentworth.
He looked up sharply from where he'd been reading some sort of document a second man had slid in front of him. She hadn't seen either of them from the outside, tucked as they were in the corner, and as Johnny sucked in a sharp breath, she realized she wasn't the only one.
Their eyes locked together, and Eden felt trapped in a vortex where Miles's mouth dropped open in shock as recognition flared in his dark eyes, and she knew the same expression was painted across her own face.
"You,"she whispered, her heart starting to thunder through her veins.
He took a step back as if she'd spat the word at him. As if it carried a weight that could dissect him. His gaze tracked sideways, a furtive move that compounded his guilt.
The truth was etched on every inch of his body and face.
"You know these people?" the man at his side asked, and Eden saw in the thick dark slashing frown of his brows a similarity between them.
Miles turned and bolted for the bench in the middle of the room.
"Stop them!" Mayhew yelled. "If they hit the panic button—"
"Don't move," Johnny snarled, pointing his handgun directly at Miles. It had been provided by Mayhew, and a thin green dot bloomed right in the middle of Miles' forehead.
He skidded to a halt.
A shotgun pumped as Lincoln turned his weapon on the other man, who'd been in the process of reaching for the datapad attached to the wall.
"MilesandNigel Wentworth," Mayhew mocked. "What are the odds? Here we are looking for whoever was behind a certain plague ravaging the Wastelands, and who should we find but the Wentworth's themselves. Daddy Wentworth's going to be quite unamused when he discovers the pair of you dabbling in things you shouldn't be."
"Miss McClain," Miles managed to gape. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"What the hell am I—?" Her fury burned to the surface, turning her incandescent with fury. This man had tried to murder hundreds, possibly thousands for a fucking mine.
Eden didn't even realize she was moving toward him until he threw up his hands with a yelp. Her fist was moving independently of her and slammed right through his ineffective guard.
Miles's head snapped back as her punch landed, sending him staggering into a tray of tools. They smashed to the ground, the violent echo of their landing ringing in her ears.
"You murderous bastard!" She hit him again, driving the blow through her knuckles and not her fingers, the way Adam had taught her. "You fucking prick! You unleashed a gods damned plague on us as though we weren't even human. You thought you'd wipe out my settlement just so you didn't have to pay more to get your greedy hands on the Copperplate mine. Admit it!"
"I didn't!" Miles bleated. "I had nothing to do with it!"
Rage consumed her. She turned to find Johnny right behind her and snatched the spare pistol from his belt. Eden drove the muzzle right into Miles's forehead until it left a white ring of pressure on his skin. "Then tell me how a Confederacy-manipulated plague suddenly managed to afflict Wastelanders? Tell me how a bacteria that could only be found in this fucking lab made its way hundreds of miles west, where it started killingmypeople." Her hand shook. "Explain why your men were vaccinated against it before they even arrived!"
