The Brightest Night (Origin 3)

Pressing her lips again, she shook her head. “But is that really their goal? There are a lot of people they’d need to take out if they didn’t want to spend every waking moment fearing a rebellion. And do we really know what their endgame truly is? We don’t, but I can’t figure out how they plan to accomplish any of this with a hundred or so trained Trojans and an army of recently mutated humans.”

I mulled that over, thinking about how the world viewed Jason Dasher as a hero. “But if they make themselves out to be the heroes’ like Jason Dasher did, and they make those they want to get rid of the villains, it may be easy for them to take control.”

Zoe fell quiet, and there was a part of me that couldn’t even believe we were having this conversation, so maybe Zoe was on to something about how the human psyche seeks to protect via levels of denial.

But like I’d realized before, the luxury of denial was something none of us could afford.

“It’s already begun.” Unease coated my skin. “Look at how the Luxen are being blamed for people getting sick. Something that’s biologically impossible, but not a lot of people seem to question what they’re being fed by people like Senator Freeman.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. “We didn’t really get to talk about the whole flu thing that the Sons of Liberty guy told us about. What was his name? Steven? I didn’t get a chance to ask Eaton about it, but what if that’s true?”

Zoe sat back, eyes widening with surprise. “God, I can’t believe I forgot about that.”

“A lot has been happening,” I reminded her.

Raising her brows in agreement, she nodded. “Steven said that the Daedalus had weaponized the flu and have been releasing it in batches, right?”

I nodded.

Her gaze drifted to the rippling curtains. “They manipulated a strain of the flu to carry the mutation. People who get their yearly flu shot may still get pretty sick, but they won’t mutate. Those who didn’t get the shot will…”

“Mutate or die.” Like Ryan, one of our classmates, who had gotten the flu and died. Or Coop and Sarah. They’d mutated. But then there’d been the outbreaks in Boulder and Kansas City. People died there, too. Steven claimed those cases were test runs, and the mutated virus hadn’t been released widely.

Yet.

Even right now, I could hear my mom lecturing about the importance of the flu vaccine. Had she known what the Daedalus were going to do with the flu virus? Closing my eyes, I cursed myself. She had to know. She worked in infectious diseases, and God, she could’ve been a part of making that weaponized strain at some point. Was that why she’d been so pro–flu shot? Because she knew what was coming, and if so, was that further evidence of a change of heart?

It didn’t matter.

Because it didn’t undo what she’d done, and her change of heart didn’t change enough. She could’ve warned people. She could’ve done something.

“I don’t even want to believe it,” Zoe admitted. “See? That’s the human part of me screaming it sounds too impossible, but I know better.”

And I now also knew better.

“Damn. If they release that flu more widely and a whole crap ton of people fall ill or if some of them start acting like Coop did, raging out like rabies-infected zombies, people are going to panic, and the Daedalus can then swoop in, giving frightened people someone to blame. The Luxen.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “It will be bad.”

It would be catastrophic.

“How many people even get the flu shot?” she asked, and I knew she wasn’t expecting an answer.

“A little over forty percent, sometimes higher if there’s a bad seasonal flu.” When she blinked at me, a weak smile formed. “Um, Mom used to rant about vaccines a lot. I only know that because of her.”

Zoe studied me for a moment and then said, “Well, over fifty percent will either mutate or die. That’s a hell of an army, or that’s a whole lot of thinning the herd.”

And the herd had already been thinned when the Luxen invaded four years prior—220 million people had died then.

Fewer people who could think and who could fight would be easier to control.

Pulling my legs up to my chest, I folded my arms around my knees. “We have to stop them before they release that virus, because it will be too late by then.”

Zoe’s pupils gleamed bright white for a handful of seconds before returning to black. She didn’t respond, and I figured she was too caught up in imagining what it would be like if that virus were released.

Anger resurfaced once more, but this time it didn’t slither; it roared through me like a raging river. “Even if the Daedalus didn’t have this flu virus, something needs to be done to them.”