Page 2 of Chaos Destiny
I ran my fingers through my slim locs. “You’ve got to be kidding me. With how long this thing can incubate, they could have been infected days ago.”
“Jane had to have gotten infected on her last trip out, which means it’s likely rampant in D.C. Then, I think she brought it to Milton or Pearce. Maybe both. Or Milton and Pearce infected one another, but Jane is definitely Patient Zero. Doesn’t matter, though. That’s not the worst of it.”
A woman named Rashida entered the room, the only other person without medical or research accolades. They didn’t arrive together, but from the way they reacted when they saw that they’d both been summoned, I could tell they knew each other from before.
Rashida set a device on the table, one far more basic than any other gadgets I’d seen them use.
She pressed a button.
Seconds into the transmission, my blood turned to ice:
Operation Nightshade.
Target location: CDC Bunker.
Theta-9.
No survivors.
Repeat: no survivors.
I’d talked to the Feds onlymomentsago.
They’d planned my execution while looking me in the eyes as if my life amounted to nothing. I’d given my life to my career andresearch, and I was one of the best at what I did. Yet, to them, I was about as worthy as a piece of cardboard saturated in rat urine.
“You’ve consistently been the primary voice of reason down here,” Hunter said. “You’re fighting the hardest. Of everyone here, you’re the one me and Shida felt we could trust.”
I could barely understand him.
Fog slowly diffused throughout my skull.
“Dr. D, do you feel like there are others we could trust?”
Outside of Omar, my bodyguard, the answer was no. “Just Omar,” I said. “But how do we get out? They have us locked down like a maximum security prison.”
“Shida and I can get you out.”
“Do you have somewhere to go?”
“I need to get back to my wife. I haven’t talked to her since I got here, and trust me, stopping me from doing what I want isn’t easy. For them to have usthatlocked down? I didn’t trust this process from the start. I’ve been looking for a way out since day one.”
The shadow of coordinated footsteps moved along the basement windows.
Hunter shoved a keycard into my grip. “Here. Get Omar. Don’t worry about your things. None of it will matter in the long run. From what I can tell, there won’t be much of a world to return to.”
The door burst open.
Omar poked his head in. “Tayler, are you all?—”
“They’re entering the door code,” Hunter announced. “We need to go. Right now. Move, move, move.”
We hurried out of the conference room and raced down the hallway in the opposite direction of the video conference room. Along the way, I briefed Omar on the situation. Rashida and Hunter brandished guns, which showed me how foolishlyunderprepared I was for my country to so blatantly stab me in the back. I was used to them brandishing a knife and telling me it was a piece of cotton. This time, they didn’t bother with the gaslighting bullshit.
“Tayler,” Omar called. He handed me a pistol. “In the event we get separated. I know you know how to use it.”
Hunter remained at the head of our four-person procession, keying open door after door, while Omar covered the rear. We’d been underground for weeks, but the maze of the layout wasn’t as fresh in my mind as it seemed to be for him. With how he moved, he could have navigated the halls blindfolded.
The next door he opened, we spotted camouflage. A canister rolled on the ground toward us, white smoke filling the narrow opening. My eyes and lungs immediately started to burn, so I covered my nose using the collar of my T-shirt.
