Hidden Empire (Empire 2)

"They're crazy now," said Cole. "They won't say it outright, but they have some insane belief that anything that goes wrong in the world is Torrent's fault."

"The President?"

"Yes," said Cole.

She knew there was more to it than that, but she wasn't going to push. He'd tell her what he thought she should know.

Besides, though she had long suppressed them in order to work with the man, she had suspicions along those same lines herself. So had Cole, once.

"Cat did this to me," said Cole.

"Did what?" she asked.

"Infected me."

She didn't want to argue with him, but how could he know?

As if he heard her skepticism, he said, "He sneezed in my face."

"But it must have been an accident," she said.

"He leaned into my face to sneeze," said Cole. "And he admitted it. They all admitted it. They got themselves infected on purpose, and since nobody wears masks around here, inside the base, they probably infected everyone else."

"They were the breach of the quarantine? On purpose?"

"They think Torrent's quarantine will fail. They think he expects it to fail, wants it to fail. So they exposed themselves and all of us to the nictovirus so that whoever lived would be immune. There'd be a team of soldiers who had already had the disease and wouldn't get it again."

Cecily thought about it. "It makes a perverse kind of sense. Except for the ones who die."

"They're soldiers. They thought of it as an acceptable attrition rate. Especially since they think every other army in the world will go through the same thing."

"So your group here will be the first company of immune soldiers in the army."

"That's the plan. If you can call it a plan. Russian roulette with half the chambers full."

Cecily thought about it some more. "You think they were wrong."

"They were damn well wrong to infect everybody, especially me, without asking me first."

"Come on, Cole," said Cecily. "You know you could never have given that order."

He glumly conceded the point by not responding.

"Are you still angry at Cat?" she asked.

He shook his head and then winced at the pain the movement caused him. "He's the best off," he said.

"What do you mean?" she said. "If the others live—"

"Whether they live or die, that's in the hands of God. And M

ark. And all you Christians," said Cole.

"So what did you mean by that? Cat being the best off?"

He almost answered. But then he gave a weak little wave of his hand. "Go back to your son. He needs you more than I do. I'm sorry I dragged you away from him."

And as she left his quarters, he said, "You were crazy to come here, crazy to bring Mark."