Page 4 of The Hero Within
She looked up over the edge of the data pad. "Yes. Mr. Wentworth gifted it to me."
"I wouldn't use that," he said, his gaze dropping. "They can hack your data from hundreds of miles away."
"I've been assured it's out of range of their data stations. Wentworth complained about Absolution being in a 'blackspot.’ I think that was the term he used." She used the stylus to tap in a small note under symptoms:Paranoia. But was it merely a measure of Mr. Chin's personality? Or something more insidious? "And it's not as though I have anything on this of import."
Eden took his vitals. "You said the Confederacy know about the plague? How long have you been feeling like this? When did the rash first appear?"
He answered her questions tersely.Yes, they knew. Two weeks. Eight days.
Hmm. Pulse regular, limited signs of fluid turgidity when she pinched his skin. Taking the small torch she'd been given by the Confederacy during the opening negotiations, she peered into his eyes, and then insisted upon examining his chest and taking his temperature.
"You have a mild case of plague," she announced, stepping back. Maggie was right. The timeline was unusual. Phase two turned swiftly into phase three, and Mr. Chin's rash had appearedeightdays ago. "You should consider yourself lucky."
"I shouldn't have any signs of it at all," he said tersely.
"I'm sure—"
"Wentworth promised the vaccination we received last month would protect us," Mr. Chin insisted.
Eden slowly lifted her head. "Vaccination?" She'd read about the theory in old pre-Darkening manuals she'd salvaged over the years.
When she'd been a little girl, she even remembered a smuggler injecting her with a combination of needles for a small fortune, though Eden had no clue what they'd been for. That was the year measles killed five people in their town, including her mom.
Her family had only had enough money to protect her and her brother, Adam, and Eden had known then she wanted to become a healer, so nobody else would lose their mom.
"Wait. Wentworth and the Confederacy expected the plague to hit?" And they hadn't breathed a word during the negotiations? Granted, they'd been stalled in the last month, but... it was common courtesy.
"He knew there were cases of it. I'm a geologist by trade, so I wasn't involved in most meetings, but I saw a disease outburst map displayed on the map table when I was checking in one night. Wentworth swiftly downsized the map, which made me wonder at the time. Not my area though, and it doesn't pay to be too curious. He evacuated the survey camp last week," Chin replied. "The reivers were starting to get restless, and there was talk of dead bodies being found out in the ranges. Wentworth wanted to clear the area until the mayhem died down, and considering there'd been no progress with the settlement agreement, he was feeling restless for home. Wanted to get back to Cortez City."
Eden had radioed in two weeks ago, as usual, and Wentworth hadn't breathed a word of it. That was the day Emily started complaining of a rash.
"How'd you end up being left behind?"
Chin looked down at his clasped hands. "I hid in the mines during the evac. Wentworth was on a strict timetable, so I knew he'd have to leave without me."
Guy was definitely crazy. "I would kill to have half the resources the Confederacy has."
"I would risk my life to have half the freedom you Wastelanders have," he replied simply.
Eden slowly nodded. She'd heard living in the Confederacy city-states was almost as dangerous as living outside their walls. No privacy. The military in charge of everything. Citizens encouraged to report dissidents. Enormous prison facilities where people vanished.
And that was only what she'd heard from traders.
"Tell me more about this vaccination," she said. "I've only been able to discover the disease is bacterial in nature, and seems to be responding to the antibiotics I have."
Antibiotics she was about to run out of. There were limited supplies of dextrose and saline solution too. Limited supplies of damned near everything. If she didn't get another shipment through from a Confederacy smuggler in the next day or two, she'd be shit out of luck.
"That's the problem," Mr. Chin said. "The salt plague isn't natural. Your antibiotics will seem to work. Initially. Your patients will start to feel better, their fever will break, and then all of a sudden you'll notice the bacteria seems to retaliate. Within twenty-four hours you'll lose them."
Eden's throat went dry. "What?"
Mr. Chin opened his mouth, clearly trying to work out the right words. "I don't know to how to say this, but this plague has been genetically tampered with. It's been designed to be resistant to most strains of antibiotics. Last year there were rumors of one of the Confederacy generals running a top-secret project that tested on human subjects. He set up a private laboratory in Cortez City, and a corporation called the Radisson-Meyers Syndicate.
"A whistle-blower broke the news to the military; General Radisson was buying Wastelanders from the slavers down south and using them in certain medical experiments. He used his military access to smuggle them into Cortez City." Chin swallowed, and glanced down at his lap. "My wife, Megan, worked as an attaché to Lieutenant Bligh, who exposed Radisson. They kept it out of the docu-feeds, but she spoke of it to me when she was home. Said there was enough salt plague created to wipe out millions. Radisson was planning on a coup; he was the only one with the cure. It bothered her how they kept it quiet, and then Megan was killed on her way to work one day. Someone planted a bomb under her car. I couldn't stay there any longer, so I put my hand up for the Copperplate Mine Expedition."
"Eden?" Maggie burst into the tent breathlessly.
Eden held up her hand, staring into Chin's eyes. This couldn't be happening. Most of her plague caseshad beengetting better. "How do I cure them then?"
