The Isle by Jordana Frankel

Author:Jordana Frankel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

30

REN

5:55 P.M., FRIDAY

Inside the box is an empty glass vial. The white label stuck to it reads HBNC.

I’m shaking—this can’t be true—but it’s all coming together, and it don’t matter that every bone in my body, every hair, muscle, sinew, and pore resists it. Bellum Pestilentia—War by disease. Pestilence . . .

Blight.

Light pixels throw themselves onto the air. They form a holo of the governor himself, cropped from the shoulders up. In the image, he’s holding the very vial that’s sitting in this box. He looks directly at me, and he speaks.

“This is a message for the Tètai:

“Hyper Basilic Neoplasma Contagion—that is what I’ve named this virus, and it’s taken me years to develop. Do not for a moment doubt my intentions. This is a deadly biological agent. Hear this: If you will not provide me with the spring’s location, I will release this virus, and then I will wait. As long as it takes for you to provide me with the cure, I will wait. The dead will be on your hands. It is within your power to stop this from happening.

“You know what I want.”

The holo repeats on a loop and Emilce drops the lid closed.

I turn nuclear. My insides go radioactive. I’m like the power plant upriver that infected everything. The virus. Voss created the virus. I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t swallow. I can’t . . . I can’t . . . I can’t—

“Why do you have this?” I ask, doubled over next to Emilce’s cot, about to be sick. “Your husband sent it to the Tètai. How did you get it?”

“It was sent back, by one of them. A girl . . . Kita something,” she says nonchalantly. “Their way of spitting in his face, maybe.”

Now I’m really reeling. Kitaneh knew. She knew Voss would release the Blight, and she did nothing to stop him. Does Derek know? Do Lucas and Sipu know? Did everyone know, then sit back and watch as it all happened?

Emilce lowers the lid with one hand. “Take the box. Use it for your vengeance or your vigilante justice, I don’t care which. Just use it.”

I’ll use it. The beast made of teeth bares its jaws. I’d forgotten it was still inside me, but here it is. Ready. Waiting. I take the box from her hands.

At the last moment, she pulls away.

“On one condition.” Emilce looks at the IV, watches as it drips the serum and a minuscule dose of everlasting life into her veins.

“You want me to kill you.” It’s not a question. I already know that’s what she wants.

Emilce nods. “Guilt,” she begins slowly, “is uniquely powerful. Some, it motivates into action. Others, like myself—steadfast inaction. By the time that girl had sent back the box, the virus was out. It was too late . . . if you believe in too late, and I did. Fear helped. How do you destroy the man you love and continue on, both of you alive?” She stops there and looks away.

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