Page 91 of Smoky Lake

Gil narrowed his eyes at the kid. “What do you mean, bullshit? He tried it on Ani. Remember she had the antibodies?”

“Then she had a lil’ case of the omega, that’s it. Very mild, probably didn’t notice. I’m the mycologist, not Victor. That spray does nothing.”

“Then…” Gil shook his head, at a total loss. “Then what’s this all about? What do they want from Victor?”

In the silence of Nyx’s pause, water lapped against the steel posts of the dock. Mist wove around the tall spruce surrounding them. Gil held his breath, waiting for whatever revelation was yet to come.

”It’s my fault,” Nyx finally said. “See, I was paying attention to Victor. Every time we talked, he seemed more out there. Like he was saving the world, but also he was suspicious of everyone. Paranoid. He hallucinated a lot. I realized that he was dosing himself with so much of that fungus, the Milagrosporos, that he became delusional. I mean, it’s a hallucinogen. He was living in a fantasy world. He got fixated on how he could save the world with that spray. I think the Milagrosporos really fucked him up. He needs to detox.”

Gil still didn’t understand.

“Okay, you figured out he was taking too much of that fungus. So?”

“So I…I mean, I was just reporting what was going on. To my contact. They got the idea of what to do next.”

“Which is…”

But Nyx didn’t have to say it, because all of a sudden Gil knew. “They want to turn the Milagrosporos into a bioweapon.”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus.” He’d been focused on the virus—they all had. The CDC, the Army. This entire time, it had actually been the mycelium that was the threat.

“It makes you delusional,” Nyx explained. “It makes you extremely paranoid. It stimulates the production of a chemical in your brain, like psylocibin, but a lot darker. If someone could concentrate it and release it strategically, they could really mess with a population. People would go crazy, stop trusting each other. They’d turn on each other.”

“That sounds even worse than the virus.”

“Oh, it is. The virus ain’t so bad. Our immune systems are adapting quickly. That’s why New Frontiers is focused in on the Milagrosporos. The core sampling was a bust, so was the omegavirus. They gotta turn a profit somehow.”

“What a fucking mess.”

“I know.” Nyx hung his head and plunged his hands into his hair. “I love all mycelium, all fungi. They’re my jam. None of this was my idea. I’m not an evil genius, I’m just a research assistant.”

What was he, twenty-one? Twenty-two? Gil had made plenty of mistakes at that age, though probably nothing quite so potentially catastrophic. And this kid was probably brilliant. Even smart people could be manipulated, obviously. Everyone had their biases, everyone had their soft spots.

“So they want Victor to hand over the Milagrosporos he has?”

“They want his research. I guess he wrote everything in code, that’s how paranoid he was getting. He split it up and hid it in several different places. They found most of it, but they need him to decipher it. It sounds like poetry, but it’s really code.”

Everything red, everything dead. Ice castles in the sky.

That was Victor’s research? Go figure.

Nyx groaned into his hands. “I feel so fucking stupid. Victor went off the deep end, but he wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I heard them talk about some kids stumbling across their base, but I didn’t know they were Ahtna. Victor will get the kids free, won’t he?”

Gil couldn’t say what Victor would or wouldn’t do at this point.

He squeezed the kid’s shoulder. He felt sorry for Nyx. He was young and he’d made some gigantic mistakes, but they didn’t have time for an emotional meltdown. “Do you know where they were taking Victor?”

“No, but I know it’s somewhere at the head of the lake, near the glacier. We’d need either a boat or a plane. I don’t even think you can get there on foot, it’s too rough.”

They had a boat, the same one Victor had used. It was tied up at the dock right now. They had a four-wheeler. But both of those would take too long. Obviously the mercenaries didn’t really care about either Firelight Ridge or the teenagers they were holding. Once they were done using them as hostages, who knew what they’d do?

“Let’s go.” He hauled Nyx to his feet. “I’m ready to put a stop to this, how about you?”

“What are we going to do?”

“Find a cell signal and call my brother. He knows the glacier and this lake better than anyone.”

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