I stand still, wondering if it will attack me, but nothing happens. My eyes are adjusting, and with every passing second, more of the room comes into focus. The floor is a nightmarish soup of water, ashes, dirt, and blood. At the very bottom, I see the bodies of the Moroccan miners, crushed under the rubble. Above them, Europeans lie prostrate, ripped to shreds, some burned, all mutilated by a weapon I can’t imagine. It’s not an explosion, or a gun, or a knife. And they didn’t die recently. The wounds look old. How long have I been down here?
I search the bodies, hoping to see one in particular. But Rutger isn’t here.
I rub my face. I’ve got to focus. Got to get home. Helena.
The electric car is gone. I’m weak, tired, and hungry, and at that moment, I’m not sure I will ever see daylight again, but I put one foot in front of the other and start the arduous trek out of the mine. I pump my legs as hard as they’ll go and brace for the pain, but it never touches me. I’m driven to get out of this place by a strength and fire I didn’t know I possessed.
The mine flies by in a flash, and I see the light as I hike out of the last turn of the spiral. They’ve covered the entrance to the tunnel with a white tent, or a plastic sheet of some type.
I brush the flap aside, and I’m surrounded by soldiers in gas masks and strange plastic suits. I wrestle free, but they tackle me and hold me to the floor. From the ground, I see a tall soldier stride over. Even through the bulky suit, I know who it is. Konrad Kane.
One of my captors looks up at him and speaks through the mask in a muffled voice. “He just walked out, sir.”
“Bring him,” Kane says in a deep, disembodied voice.
The men drag me deeper into the warehouse, to a series of six white tents that remind me of a field hospital. The first tent has row after row of cots, all covered in white sheets. I hear screams in the next tent. Helena.
I struggle at the men at my sides, but I’m too weak, from lack of food, from the walk out, and from whatever the tube did to me. They hold me tight, but I continue to fight.
I can hear her clearly now, at the end of the tent, behind a white curtain. I lunge for her, but the soldiers jerk me back, walking me down the row so I get a good look at the people lying dead on the skinny cots. Horror spreads over me. Lord Barton and my mother-in-law are here. Rutger. Kane’s wife. All dead. And there are others, people I don’t recognize. Scientists. Soldiers. Nurses. We pass a bed with a boy, Kane’s son. Dietrich? Dieter?
I can hear the doctors talking to Helena, and, as we move past the edge of the curtain, I see them swarming around her, injecting her with something, and holding her down.
The men hold me as I struggle. Kane turns to me. “I want you to see this, Pierce. You can watch her die like I watched Rutger and Marie die.”
They drag me closer. “What happened?” I say.
“You unleashed hell, Pierce. You could have helped us. Whatever is down there killed Rutger and half his men. The ones who managed to make it back to the surface were diseased. A plague beyond anything we could imagine. It’s devastated Gibraltar and is moving through Spain.” He pulls the white curtain back farther, revealing the entire scene: Helena tossing in a bed surrounded by three men and two women working feverishly.
I push the guards off me, and Kane holds a hand up to stop them from chasing me. I run to her, brush her hair back, and kiss her cheek, then her mouth. She’s burning up. Feeling her boiling skin terrifies me, and she must see it. She reaches out and caresses my face. “It’s ok, Patrick. It’s only the flu. Spanish Flu. It will pass.”
I look up at the doctor. His eyes dart to the ground.
A tear wells in my eye and rolls slowly onto my cheek. Helena brushes it away. “I’m so glad you’re safe. They told me you were killed in a mining accident, trying to save the Moroccans who worked for you.” She holds my face in her hand. “So brave.”
She jerks a hand to her mouth, trying to suppress the cough that shakes her whole body and the rolling hospital bed. She holds her swollen belly with the other hand, trying to keep herself from hitting the rails at the side of the bed. The cough continues for what feels like eternity. It sounds like her lungs are tearing apart.
I hold her shoulders down. “Helena…”
“I forgive you. For not telling me. I know you did it for me.”
“Don’t forgive me, please don’t.”
Another round of coughing racks her and the doctors push me out of the way. They give her oxygen, but it doesn’t seem to help.
I watch. And I cry. And Kane watches me. She kicks and fights and when her body goes limp, I turn to Kane and my voice is flat, lifeless, almost like his voice that comes from the mask. Then and there, in that makeshift Immari hospital, I make a deal with the devil.
The tears rolled down Kate’s face. She closed her eyes, and she wasn’t in the bed with David in Tibet. She was back in San Francisco, on a cold night five years ago, in a hospital bed. A gurney. They were rushing her out of the ambulance and through the hospital. Doctors and nurses shouted around her, and she was yelling at them, but they wouldn’t listen to her. She grabbed the doctor’s arm. “Save the baby, if it’s between me and the baby, save—”
The doctor pulled away from her and shouted at the burly man pushing the gurney. “OR two. Stat!”
They wheeled her faster, and the mask was over her mouth, and she fought to stay awake.
She awoke to a large, empty hospital room. She hurt all over. There were several tubes running from her arm. She reached quickly for her stomach, but she knew before her hands made contact. She pulled the gown back to reveal the long ugly scar. She buried her head in her hands and cried, for how long she didn’t know.
“Dr. Warner?”
Kate looked up, startled. Hopeful. A shy nurse stood before her. “My baby?” Kate said, her voice cracking.
The nurse’s eyes drifted down, focusing on her feet.
Kate crumbled back in the bed. The tears came in sheets now.
“Ma’am, we weren’t sure, there’s no in-case-of-emergency on file, should, is there anyone we should call? A… father.”
A flash of rage stemmed the tide of tears. The seven-month romance, the dinners, the charm. The internet entrepreneur who seemed to have it all, almost too good to be true. Not almost. The accident, the apparently faulty birth control. His disappearing act. Her decision.
“No, there’s no one to call.”
David hugged her tight and brushed the tears from her eyes.