Page 76 of Challenged

Dawes’ mouth opens and closes like a fish.

“That’s what the protective gear is for, isn’t it? To handle the virus once you engineered it. To handle the raskarrans you infected with it.”

“I didn’t want to release it,” Dawes stammers, no sharpness or strength left in her voice now. “I wanted to test it first. We didn’t even know if it would work. I wanted to be sure.”

“You would still have killed whoever you infected with it.”

“Better that a handful die while we refined the design than…”

“Than a massacre?” I finish for her.

“I was going to tell them what he did,” Dawes all but yells. “It was going to be in my report that he pushed the button. He ruined years of careful preparation and planning. Billions in funding. But Farrow couldn’t have that, could he? And he had all your cronies on his side.” She directs this at Deborah, her tone accusing. “Promised them cushy positions, massive bonuses, promotions. All manner of things that he could never have delivered on. But they wouldn’t hear anyone say a bad word about Farrow, and with them on his side, the rest of us couldn’t do much of anything. But I was going to try. Farrow found out somehow. Must have been reading our emails. He found out what I was going to do, and that’s why he froze me. So I couldn’t tell the truth about what he did. So he could tell whatever little story he wanted to and, if he needed someone to blame, he could blame me.”

“Blame you for what?” Liv says from somewhere behind Deborah.

All three of us turn to her, and our faces must be a picture. Deborah looks like she’s about to burst into tears, Dawes’ facebright, angry red. And my own… I don’t even know what I must look like.

Liv’s own expression is cold, hard. So is her voice when she says again, “Blame you for what?”

The news spreads round the camp like a virus. One by one I watch the raskarran faces crumple, shock, horror and grief all too easy to read on their not quite human faces. The ones with mates seek comfort in their linashas. I see Lorna consoling a desolate-looking Shemza, while Liv practically drags Gregar out into the forest where he bellows out his incoherent rage. I’d be worried about her safety, except I know he would never do anything to hurt her.

None of this helps the girls who were woken up yesterday. They stare at all the raskarrans, watching them break down, and huddle close to each other, terrified. I watch Anghar try his best to smile at them reassuringly, but he doesn’t last five seconds before he has to turn away, walk off into the trees to be by himself for a while.

“What’s going on?” one of them asks.

I turn round to see it’s Summer, the suspicious one Deborah and I woke up yesterday. She’s looking at me. I’m the only one left in the area who isn’t dealing with a raskarran.

“It’s too complicated to explain right now,” I say, because I just do not have the emotional energy. “They’ve had some really bad news. Nothing that changes anything for you. You’re safe, I promise.”

“What authority do you have to promise that?”

I can’t blame her for asking. It’s exactly the sort of thing I might have asked if I was in her shoes right now.

“Do I look afraid?” I say. “Do I look like I’m worried about if I’m going to get fed?”

“You look sad.” Bree. Ironically, she’s actually stopped crying.

“I am sad,” I say. “Sad for them.”

Sad for the great emptiness the raskarrans must each hold in their chests - partway filled by their linashas and children, if they’re lucky enough to have them. But never completely filled. How could you replace what they lost? And hard as it was to deal with that loss, knowing that it was just nature’s cruel randomness behind it, it must be so, so much worse knowing that it wasn’t chance. It was a reckless act of violence against them. Reckless and devastating.

Then there’s the knowing that it changed them. That they survived but are no longer what they were when they were born. It changed their DNA enough to make them compatible with humans.

“Is that why the females were affected worse?” Grace asks me a while later, when the news has settled on everyone, the emotions around the base quieting some. “Because it was harder to make a female able to carry a baby than it was to make a male able to make one?”

“Has to be,” I say. “It’s the only thing that makes any sense.”

And the old and young surviving. Because of the lower levels of sex hormones in their bodies? Dawes might know for sure, but I’m not about to go looking for her. Sensibly, she’s made herself scarce.

“What are we going to do about Dawes?” Sam asks, as if she picked up on my thoughts somehow.

“Leave her here to rot?” Deborah says.

“Tempting,” Liv replies. “But no. We do that, we’re no better than Mercenia.”

“On this one occasion, do we mind stooping to their level?” There’s a quiet sort of rage in Grace’s voice.

“We’re going to destroy this place when we go,” I say. “It’s the only way to be sure that no one can ever send a message to Mercenia. Leaving her here would be leaving her to die.”

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