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  “Do we give chase?” his aide asked.

  “No,” Woref said. They had planned for this contingency. As long as Thomas was delayed by four or more hours, he would be too late. The western army would march.

  He glanced at the sun. “Prepare the men to march at nightfall. We are going into the forest.”

  By week’s end, the daughter of Qurong, Chelise, would be his. And then he would look to become Qurong himself.

  27

  MONIQUE PEERED at the Washington skyline through the Suburban’s tinted windows. The American people didn’t know yet; that was her first shock. Most of them probably didn’t even know that the Raison Strain even existed, much less that it had infected most of the world’s population already.

  America’s Deputy Secretary of State Merton Gains was on his cell phone, talking in rapid-fire sentences with someone named Theresa Sumner from the CDC in Atlanta. Their plan was to debrief Monique here in Washington before getting her to a yet-undisclosed lab that was already working on the Raison Strain. She’d managed only an hour of dreamless sleep over the Atlantic, and her weariness was beginning to play with her mind—not a good thing, considering the task ahead of her.

  The deputy secretary snapped his phone closed. “You sure you’re okay?” he asked yet again.

  “I’m tired. But otherwise I’m fine. Unless of course you’re referring to the Raison Strain, in which case I’m sure that I’m dying like the rest of you.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  She looked over his shoulder at a boy riding a blue bicycle with a fake engine down the sidewalk. His hands were free, and he was holding a soft drink.

  “I still can’t believe that no one knows.”

  “It’ll break soon enough. Hopefully we’ll have some good news to go along with the bad.”

  “My good news,” she said.

  “Your good news.”

  “Then let’s hope probability is on our side.”

  “Where would you put the probability?”

  She shrugged. “Sixty percent?”

  He frowned, then flipped open his phone and placed another call, this one to someone who was evidently working on a report that Russia’s leadership was fracturing.

  Monique closed her eyes and let her mind slip back to Thomas. She’d asked about him the moment her feet hit the tarmac, but Gains only knew what she’d told him. No new word. They assumed he was dead.

  As did she. The water no longer healed as it had in the hotel room in Bangkok. And even if there was a way to heal Thomas in the forest, he might not be healed here as he had been three times before.

  Astounding that she was even thinking like this. She’d lived in Rachelle’s skin for less than a day, and only in her dreams, but the experience had been so real that she couldn’t deny the existence of Thomas’s reality. She’d spent the last ten hours contemplating this strange phenomenon, and with each passing hour her conviction that Rachelle and Justin really did exist strengthened.

  Which meant that Thomas had indeed been healed by Elyon’s water after being shot on the hotel bed in Bangkok. That time he’d been in the vicinity of water, which healed him immediately, perhaps before he’d actually died. When Carlos had shot him in the head after his first rescue attempt, he’d actually been in the lake, and his healing had been instantaneous. He probably hadn’t died either time.

  But this time, he had really died. She’d watched Carlos check his pulse. There was no way the killer would have left him without being completely satisfied that he was dead. That meant Thomas would have died in the desert as well. Maybe the Horde had double-crossed him and killed him. Or maybe he’d just died. Even if Justin brought him back to life, there was no guarantee that he would come back to life here.

  He was dead. He was really dead this time.

  Monique swallowed a lump in her throat. If so, then she would make it well known that he had saved them all. Assuming her antivirus worked. Either way, he had saved her. Carlos would have killed her sooner or later. If not him, then the virus would have.

  For that matter, it still might.

  “There’s something you should know,” she said. “The man behind Svensson is the director of foreign affairs, Armand Fortier.”

  “You know that for a fact?” he asked, surprised. “We’d speculated, but I’m not sure we’ve confirmed anything.”

  “Thomas and I met with him. I’m also quite sure that he has someone on the inside over here. Someone who has access to your president.”

  She might as well have dropped a bomb. He just stared at her. It occurred to her that Fortier’s mule could be this very man. She could be telling the wrong man the wrong things and never know the better of it.

  “I could be mistaken,” she said. “But he seemed to make that claim.”

  Merton Gains broke off his stare. “Dear God, what next?”

  MIKE OREAR slipped into his chair behind the set of the show he co-anchored with Nancy Rodriguez and fixed his earpiece. Behind him large black letters spelled out the show’s name, What Matters.

  “Ready in five. You right?” Nancy asked.

  “As rain.”

  He’d been in front of the camera too many times to count in his relatively short career, but never had he been so anxious to spill the beans. He’d delayed because of the State Department’s adamant demand that he keep his mouth shut. It was non-news, they’d said. But none of that mattered any longer.

  What did matter was that he’d awakened this morning with a rash under his arms and on his thighs, and although he succeeded in persuading himself that it had nothing to do with the Raison Strain, the rash reminded him just how real this non-news of his was.

  This non-news that the world was dying of the Raison Strain without knowing it.

  Windows peered into the studio from a second story above and behind the cameras. The show was directed my Marcy Rawlins, who was reviewing last-minute details with Joe Spencer behind the glass. Any breaking news or changes would come over their earpieces from that room.

  “You okay?” Nancy asked.

  “I’m fine. Let’s roll.”

  “You look pale.”

  “I want to change things up a little. Lead with something off the schedule.”

  “Marcy clear this?”

  “No. Trust me, she won’t have to.”

  Nancy arched her brow. “Your skin, not mine.”

  “No, Nancy, you’re wrong. It’s your skin too. You’ll see.”

  “What the heck is that—”

  “Ten seconds.” The program director’s voice in their earpieces.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” she repeated.

  “You’ll see.”

  “Three . . . two . . . one . . .” She gave the on-air signal.

  Nancy was already smiling and opening the show. She ran down today’s show highlights, none of which Mike heard. His mind was elsewhere.

  There was a good reason he hadn’t put the story through the normal news channels. Even breaking-news channels, for that matter. Fact was, Marcy probably would have jumped all over it, assuming she believed his sources at all.

  But news of this kind would have to be cleared with the brass. Some of them would say that if true, any story of this magnitude should be broken by the president himself or, at the very least, someone with more seniority than Orear. They would hold it while they got up to speed. Might even spike it.

  Mike wasn’t going to take that chance. A week had passed, and signs that something very significant was in the air were everywhere, and none of his peers seemed to notice. If they did, they sure weren’t connecting the dots.

  Maybe he intended to do a bit of grandstanding, but not much. How could anyone accuse a condemned man of grandstanding, for heaven’s sake? He was dying. They were all dying. That was news and that was that. Time to let the cat out of—

  “ . . . Mike.”

  Nancy was giving him that look of nonchalance that some of the best anchors had mastere
d. I am a very significant force in the world of news, and the fact that I don’t look like I’m swimming in it makes me even more important.

  He looked up into the camera. Wrong one. The one to their left, with the red light on.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’re sitting down. The news I’m about to deliver is of the gravest kind.”

  He’d thought through his little speech a hundred times, but now it sounded trite and stupid. Delivering his bomb as if it were news lessened its importance. And yet it was that: news.

  “Mike, what are you doing?” Marcy’s voice in his ear.

  He reached up and pulled out his earpiece.

  “I . . . I’m not sure how to deliver this. It’s not the kind of news any reporter knows how to report.” From the corner of his eye he saw that Marcy had a phone to her ear. She slammed it down. The State Department had called? Or the attorney general. That was fast. One of their agents was undoubtedly watching his show.

  He had to do this before the program director could pull the plug.

  “CNN has learned that a new virus for which there is no known cure, which was previously thought to be isolated on a small island south of Java in the Indonesian islands, has spread far more widely than initially believed, perhaps to most of the world in fact. We have confirmed that the Raison Strain is widespread in the United States and has infected . . .”

  So trite. So understated. So impossible to put into words.

  “ . . . most of us. If this report is correct, and we have it on very good sources that it is, the world is facing a very, very grave crisis.”

  Impossible or not, all of it had gone out live.

  “This has come to us from the highest possible sources. It seems that our government has known for over a week and is making every possible effort to find a vaccine or an antivirus that would counter—”

  The red light went off. He’d been pulled off the air.

  Mike jerked his head to view the monitor that showed what viewers at home saw, which was at this moment a Lexus ad. The dozen or so technicians in the studio had frozen.

  The door to the studio flew open and Marcy stood in the frame, white-faced.

  “What was that?”

  Mike stood.

  “Was that . . .” Nancy pushed back her chair. “Where did you get that?”

  “That was the truth, Marcy,” he said. “And thank you for cutting to the Lexus ad. It drove the story home for our viewers. Kinda has the feel of the Gestapo jerking the plug, doesn’t it?”

  “I just got a call from the attorney general,” Marcy snapped. “They’re watching this. You’re going to incite—”

  “Of course they’re watching this!” Mike yelled. “They’re watching because they know that it’s true and they know I’ve got the whole story. Get us backup, Marcy. Call whoever you have to; just get me backup.”

  “I can’t do that! You can’t just go on the air and tell the world that they’re all about to die! Have you lost your mind?”

  He walked straight toward her. “Fine. But if I walk out of this building, I go straight to Fox. Tell them that. You have about thirty seconds to make up your minds. Either way, the full story breaks today.”

  “Don’t you dare threaten me! You’re going back on the air, and you’re going to tell them that you had no business saying what you did.”

  Her voice echoed through the room. She still didn’t believe him, did she? She was either suffering a terminal case of denial or had lost her compass in the shock of hearing about the virus.

  “You tell them, Marcy,” he said quietly. A dozen sets of eyes stared at him. The Lexus advertisement had yielded to a Mountain Dew commercial.

  The door behind Marcy burst open. “Who’s manning the hotline?” This was Wally, the news director. His eyes took in Marcy, then moved to Mike standing on the main floor by the cameras instead of seated in his seat beside Nancy. “What in the blazes is going on down here?”

  “You get back in that seat,” Marcy said icily.

  “I need a news break. Now! NBC is reporting that the French government has just declared martial law,” Wally said. “We’ve confirmed it.”

  “Martial law?” Mike said. “Why?”

  “To control the threat of a virus they claim has affected France.”

  “The Raison Strain?”

  Wally obviously hadn’t been watching Mike’s little speech.

  “How did you know that?”

  28

  MARTYN, COMMANDER of the Horde army under Qurong, stood beside his leader, facing Ciphus and the rest of the forest Council. Qurong was working his betrayal exactly as he’d planned so many months ago.

  Thousands of the villagers had gathered in the amphitheater on short notice. The news that a thousand Scab warriors had entered the village from the backside with Justin had spread quickly. Now they filled the bleachers and peered down in silence to the proceedings on the ground beneath them.

  Ciphus stood on the stage near the center, facing Qurong. Mikil and Justin were there on the left with a thousand of the Forest Guard to match his own warriors on the right. The fate of the world was riding on this play of Qurong’s. So far everything had progressed precisely as he had anticipated. By morning, the forests would be theirs.

  “Hear me, great Ciphus,” Qurong said. “I have put my life in your hands to meet with you. Surely you will consider my proposal for a truce until we can work out a lasting peace between us.”

  This wasn’t going as Ciphus had anticipated; that much was clear. Mikil had told the Council that Martyn would give up Qurong, but she’d been wrong.

  The Council leader shifted his eyes to Martyn, perhaps expecting, wanting, the commander to step in as Thomas had proposed.

  Ciphus cleared his throat. “Of course, we are always willing to listen. But you must realize that we have no basis for peace. You live in violation of Elyon’s laws. The penalty for disobeying Elyon is death. Now you want us to deny Elyon his own law by making peace with the Horde? You deserve death, not peace.”

  This was the classic doctrine of the Forest People. Ciphus was opening the door for Martyn to spring his trap, to offer Qurong’s life in exchange for peace. Not so fast, you old goat.

  “How many of us will you kill to satisfy your God?” Qurong demanded.

  “You live in death already!” Ciphus cried. “You would have us make an alliance with death? You have the whole desert; we have but seven small forests. I should ask you, why do you wage war against a small peaceful people?”

  Qurong glanced at Martyn. They made no overt signal, but the message was clear. The supreme leader was going to proceed as planned.

  “It is because we have no basis for trust between our people that we can’t extend true peace,” Qurong said. “You won’t elevate us above dogs, and we see you for the snakes you really are.”

  A rumble hurried through the crowd. Ciphus held up a hand.

  “You are right; we don’t trust you. A dog will see a golden rod and think it has seen a snake. Your eyes are blinded by your rebellion against Elyon.”

  Qurong smiled, but he didn’t take the bait to defend himself.

  “Then I will offer you more than the words of a dog today,” Qurong said. “I will show you and your people on this day that I am an honorable leader in my own way. If I do so, will you consider a truce between our people?”

  Martyn studied the elder. Come on, you wheezing old bat. You can only accept. I know you.

  Ciphus frowned and finally spoke quietly. “We would consider it.”

  “Then hear me, all of you,” Qurong said. “I have two armies camped outside of your forest at this moment. The two hundred thousand warriors to the east you know of well enough. What you don’t know is that we have a second army, twice as large, camped in the western desert.”

  This news was received by total silence. Perhaps they thought their Guard could deal with both armies. They were wrong for reasons beyond their understanding. In twenty-four hours, the
ir Guard would be defeated.

  “I am willing to commit my armies to a campaign that will destroy much of your forest and most of your warriors,” Qurong said. “But my victory would not be certain unless I had an element of complete surprise. We both know this.”

  Here it was, then. Sweat stung Martyn’s cracked skin, but he hardly noticed it.

  “As a sign of goodwill, I will now show my hand in the hopes of winning your faith. We came here today with betrayal on our minds. We planned to offer you peace, and when you accepted that peace—when your Guard was compromised—we planned to bring the full force of our armies against you in one massive campaign.”

  The silence deepened, and Martyn was quite sure it was from shock now.

  “But I will hold back for the sake of a peace accord!” shouted Qurong. “I have already told you about my army to the west. I have just now revealed my intentions and robbed myself of any victory. I see that peace is more valuable than victory.”

  Ciphus glanced at Martyn. He hadn’t expected quite this. Mikil wasn’t prepared for this either. She had the look of a dumb goat.

  “Then what do you propose?” Ciphus demanded. “That we offer you peace because you have confessed your intent to ruin us? We are to believe that you’ve experienced some kind of wholesale conversion since entering our village? A man does not change so quickly. There can be no peace without the appropriate payment. You can’t make peace with Elyon while living in your disease!”

  “No. I realize that your laws have to be satisfied in order for there to be peace. As do our laws. I propose to meet the requirements of those laws.”

  “By confessing? It’s not enough.”

  “By the death of the man who would lead us to war. I am not the one who concocted this scheme.”

  “Then who?”

  “It was him.” Qurong pointed his finger toward the Forest Guard.