Page 100 of Smoky Lake

“Paranoid?” Victor asked after a pause.

“Yes. That’s why you didn’t trust anyone.”

“You’re lying.”

“No. I swear to you on…” He cast around for something Victor would believe. “On my twin brother’s life. I’m telling you the truth. You can’t trust yourself right now. You aren’t thinking clearly.”

“Then who can I trust?” Another heart-wrenching wail.

“Trust your training,” said Ani. She broke off into a fit of coughing. The smoke was intensifying. They had to get out of here. Right now. “The only way to fight it is to learn more. You’re a scientist, and you can do that work. But only if you come out of there. What does your training say?”

“Study. Test. Reproduce the results.”

“So come out and do that. We need you to be a scientist. A real scientist. Come on, Victor. Get out of there. Now.” Gil put all the authority he could into his voice.

A moment passed, then another. Gil pulled Ani toward the crack in the rock, their closest exit from this damn cave.

“We’re going, Victor,” he yelled.

The smoke was so thick he could barely see the outline of a figure when Victor finally climbed through the gap in the rocks. Relief rushed through him.

But they were out of time. They had to leave. Ani was coughing badly now, and his first responsibility, forevermore, was to her—and to any little ones who might join them. One more time, he swooped Ani into his arms and carried her to safety.

47

One month later

* * *

Ani and Gil stood hand in hand in the shadow of the glacier, on the same Smoky Lake meadow where the New Frontiers mercenaries had been stationed—where Victor Canseco had set a fire that swept through the permafrost cave.

Even now, smoke still rose from the earth in wispy tendrils.

Gil had just come back from a quick survey of the tunnel where everything had come to a head. “Nothing, right?”

“Not that I could see. Victor will be disappointed. He was hoping some of his research might have survived.”

She made a little face. “I wouldn’t call it research. It was more like, one man’s journey into mycelial mayhem.”

He snorted. “Mycelial mayhem, that sounds about right. The only good thing he did was bring us together.” His hand tightened on hers. “Just for that, I’m willing to give him another chance.”

“As am I.” Victor was currently inhabiting a room at a rehab facility in Blackbear, alternating between episodes of paranoia and interviews with investigators from the CDC and various intelligence services.

Ani was sure he hadn’t intended for things to go so wrong. The New Frontiers group had offered Victor generous funding for his research, but he’d turned them down. They’d threatened him by bombing the Smoky Lake Research Institute, and still he’d refused to give in.

If only he’d trusted Nyx…but that was where the dark side of the Milagrosporos had raised its ugly head.

“You know, I keep wondering if there’s anything to his theory that the Milagrosporos could work with immune systems and fight all viruses,” she said. “Maybe there is a kernel of truth there.”

“Who knows?” Gil shrugged. “It really would be an incredible breakthrough. Maybe when he’s out of rehab, he can start his research over, but do it right. No more secret self-experimenting and writing in code. Paranoia, man. It’s like poison.”

“No wonder they wanted to turn the Milagrosporos into a bioweapon. What a terrible thing that would be.” She shuddered at the thought of the beloved eccentric residents of Firelight Ridge turning on each other. Sure, some of them were loners, some had crazy theories they liked to rant about—but when it came down to it, they always helped each other survive. They’d hung on through winter storms and avalanches, fires and economic collapse. Could they withstand a weaponized attempt to turn them against each other with paranoia and mistrust? Could any town?

“At least that’s never going to happen now,” said Gil. “Crisis averted.”

“I suppose we have Victor to thank for that, too.”

Not only had Victor burned all his research, but every authority in every Arctic and sub-Arctic territory had been alerted to the threat. Ironically, the omegavirus was no longer considered dangerous, even when waterborne. The Firelight Ridge outbreak had demonstrated how quickly people’s immune systems could adapt to it.

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