Winter lay on the floor in the dark, her ear pressed to the gap beneath her bedroom door. Her parents talked quietly in the dining room for nearly an hour before going to bed. After that, Winter waited another hour to ensure they were asleep before dressing in all black, bundling up as well as she could, and creeping out of her room.
The snow had picked up outside, but it wasn’t enough to deter Winter. She waited nearly half an hour for the trolley—late night service was sporadic—and rode it to the stop near Phoebe’s apartment. Her hand remained on the knife in her pocket the whole way.
The bag was right where she’d left it. It was covered in an unidentifiable liquid that smelled awful, but it was there. Winter slung it over her shoulder and walked the streets until she found a bench under a streetlight. Her hand occasionally drifted back to the pocketknife at her side, but she didn’t see another soul.
She started with the letter from the mayor. The date at the top indicated it had been written yesterday.
Mr. Blackburn,
Apologies for the letter, but I have meetings all day with the council to finalize the new laws.
We are delighted to have you helping out the city council. The city meeting at the end of January will be very important, so we’re hosting an “emergency” general assembly meeting Thursday night to address the more immediate aspects of our plans. Dinner and drinks will be served, which will serve our purposes nicely.
Gordon’s death is unfortunate, but also serves as a reminder of what we have to do. Forrest said he would be happy to buy out Gordon’s factories.
Let me know if you need more supplies by Tuesday.
Mayor Atherton
Well, most of the useful information that could have been gleaned from that was clearly based on private conversations. But the bit about the assembly meeting in a couple of days could come in handy. Though, that sounded more like a celebration of sorts than an actual meeting.
The note about Forrest buying out the factories was interesting, too, but not exactly surprising. Winter had expected someone else would take control of Gordon’s assets. She needed a better plan to stop the mayor from filling a building with sick people and working them to death.
She moved on to the journal and started by decoding sentences here and there, trying to get a sense of what information each page held. The chart with the five plagues listed turned out to be a description of combinations of the plagues, not unlike the combinations she’d made herself to kill Adams and Gordon. Average time to show symptoms, average time to death…how many people had he experimented on?
The rats, Winter remembered. He had to have been using them too. In addition to patients, undoubtedly.
Disgusted, she flipped a few pages. The next section mostly turned out to be failed recipes, as far as she could tell. She moved to the back of the book, to pages she hadn’t examined at all yet. More graphs, lists, ingredients—
Whoa. A boat?
Winter squinted at the drawing, a sketch of a boat on a river. There were a few notes scribbled next to it. Equipment fits. Not all cages can go, euthanize the rest. Dissect notable subjects.
Maybe this was where Marcus had moved his stuff after clearing out his other lab. Winter frantically translated the entire page, but there was nothing even hinting at the boat’s location.
Well, it had to be on the river somewhere. Winter stood up. Fatigue tugged at her eyelids and her limbs, begging her to go home, to sleep. But she thought of River in his hospital bed. All the people she’d seen die in the past few weeks, leaving grieving loved ones. The city council’s plans that would bring more suffering to Devil’s Pass.
She set off toward the edge of the city.
Marcus would have had to strike a balance between putting this boat within reasonable walking distance and keeping it far enough from the city streets that no one would stumble across it accidentally. The closest point of the river was where it wrapped around the northeast edge of the city. The area around where Winter had thrown Marcus’s unconscious body.
Winter hit the northeast edge of Devil’s Pass. Buildings and sidewalks faded from view, replaced with trees and dirt. Streetlights disappeared. The faint glow from the hospital windows had guided Winter the night she thought she’d killed the Plague Saint, but she didn’t have that now.
Thankfully, she did still have a few matches. And a spare piece of cloth. She searched the ground for a large stick, wrapped the cloth around the end, and lit it. Doing her best to shield her small flame from the wind with her body, she followed the sound of rushing water to the river’s edge.
Farther north, or farther south? To the north was a barely used bridge, and just upstream from that was where water was diverted into city canals. Downstream, the river ran parallel to the city for a few blocks—too far into the trees to get many visitors—before diverging and flowing out of the mountains.
South, Winter decided. She began to pick her way over rocks and branches along the riverbank. It didn’t take long for her mind to get lost in the sound of roaring water. The cold night air slowed her body, but she occasionally snapped out of her mental fog long enough to berate herself and pick up the pace.
One moment she was walking, the next she was stumbling. Her heavy eyes shot open. She met the rocky ground with a painful thud and a splash. Shallow, frigid water swallowed her hands, turning them to ice through her gloves. Her makeshift torch landed in the water with her. The flame went out in the blink of an eye.
Damn it. Winter struggled to her feet and picked up the bag that had slid off her shoulder. She blindly dug around in the bag, praying for another match. As she searched, she cautiously crept forward.
It didn’t take long for a dark shape to rise out of the water up ahead.
The appearance of the boat made Winter give up her search for the match. The faint moonlight would do for now. Besides, there was probably some source of light inside. She just had to find her way in.
She walked to the point on the shore closest to the boat and squinted into the darkness. A few planks of wood fastened together acted as a makeshift dock, stretching from the rocks out to the boat. A rope ladder seemed to be the only way onto the deck.
Winter cautiously made her way out to the middle of the river, aware of how fast it was racing by. The cold would kill her in minutes. God, Marcus really was lucky to be alive. He must have crawled out of the water pretty quickly after Winter threw him in.
The rope ladder swung around freely in the breeze. Winter grabbed it and nearly lost her balance. Jaw clenched, heart pounding, she pulled herself up and collapsed onto the boat’s deck.
The deck wrapped around a cabin. Winter stood up and grabbed the handle of the door leading inside. It flew open and slammed against the wall. The resounding thud made her wince, but there was no one around to hear it.
She closed the door behind her and tried to make out what she was looking at. Her hands blindly moved across the counter at her side, and she walked until she found a lantern. A search of the drawers eventually led her to a matchbox. Winter ignited a flame inside the lantern, peeled off her soaked gloves, and held her hands as close to the hot glass as she dared.
Now that she wasn’t blindly stumbling around and making a racket, she could hear a new sound, barely audible over the river. Scratching. Squeaking.
Winter stood frozen for a minute before mustering the strength to pick up the lantern and turn around.
The entire back wall was covered in cages, and each cage held a rat. Winter moved closer. A few moved to the bars, drawn to her presence, but others were sleeping or apparently didn’t care. Winter frowned. Actually, several of them looked rather sick. She knelt to examine the bottom row and noticed drops of blood on some of the rats’ bedding. Others clearly had eye infections.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, wondering if they could be cured. The thought of these animals dying in cages for Marcus’s research made her angry. It would be one thing if he was using them to test medicine intended to save as many as possible, but his plans for treatment were aligned with the council’s. It was only for the rich.
Besides, these rats might have been kept for a different purpose than medicine development entirely. Marcus’s notes indicated he’d been testing combinations of plagues to make something even deadlier than the diseases already choking the city.
Winter stepped away from the cages and examined the rest of the cabin. There was a table in the middle of the room, and counters lining the other walls. One corner of the room had a seat in front of a steering wheel and other controls for the boat.
In true Marcus Blackburn fashion, there was no shortage of notes and equipment on every surface. Winter moved toward a stack of notebooks. How many of them had Marcus filled, in all? There were three here on the counter, next to petri dishes and microscopes and scattered pens. She opened one.
These ones were coded too. Groaning, Winter pulled out a stool from under the counter and sank onto it. Shadows danced across the pages in time with the flickering flame as she worked.
It only took three pages to discover the horrifying truth.
Marcus made white plague.
And it wasn’t the result of one of the combinations he’d thrown together, something that could be treated with a concoction. It was so much more than that. He’d taken red plague and altered it into a worse disease, one with more severe symptoms, one that even caused hallucinations in some patients.
It seemed to be the result of developing the worst of the red plague strains, forcing them to evolve into something new. The notes on how he’d developed it were unclear in many places. He used terms Winter didn’t understand. But the how didn’t interest her as much as the why.
Winter stared at what she’d deciphered, hardly able to believe it. He hadn’t just made white plague; he’d been infecting people with it. Deliberately. Testing it. For nearly a year, and that was just based on the first date in this notebook.
Despite everything she’d seen and read already, Winter pressed a hand to her mouth. The pen she’d been using slipped from her fingers, rolled across the counter, and fell to the floor. He’d been poisoning food and drinks. And not just at the hospital. There were notes made about going to restaurants, stores…
She forced herself to read through more entries. He’d wanted to figure out the incubation time. Survival time. Incubation was unpredictable, ranging anywhere from eight to twenty hours from infection to symptoms. But it was typically only another few hours until death after that, without any treatment whatsoever. Some patients had received medicine, though. They were guinea pigs in Marcus’s search for a cure.
The first dozen or so recipes failed. And when the medicine did finally start working, Marcus had what he needed from the people who had no idea their Saint was poisoning them.
Winter decoded the recipe that was circled in red. The final cure recipe. He’d noted that, like the others, it could be administered orally. But putting it directly into the blood was far more efficient. She recognized a few chemical names from the hospital labs, but others were new to her. Where the hell was she supposed to get this stuff?
Maybe she could trick someone like Atherton into helping her. But River needed this medicine now. Winter stood up and started searching cupboards. Marcus had to have some extra cure he hadn’t used yet. Or maybe some of the ingredients she needed. She sifted through empty bottles, blood samples, and vials. Some were unlabeled, but others had names. Red plague. Red plague treatment. Blue + green. Yellow treatment, version 3.
Plague cure.
Frowning, Winter held up the small bottle. It was two-thirds full with a clear liquid. She put it in her coat and searched every inch of the rest of the cupboards, but that was all there was.
No color. Was this meant to cure everything? Winter went back to the notebooks. There was a tiny number on the cap of each vial that corresponded with entries one of them, she’d noticed. It took ten minutes to find the matching number, which was written above a recipe. This one had a few more ingredients and slightly different instructions than the white plague cure recipe, but it was definitely similar.
Winter copied down the recipe into the journal she’d stolen from Marcus’s room, returned the lantern to the spot on the counter she’d found it, and left the boat.
Her first priority was getting what she had of the plague cure to River. Then she’d figure out where to get what she needed to make more. She walked with her back to the river, hoping that as long as she moved in a straight line, she’d reach the city eventually.
It took longer than expected, but streetlights finally cut through the trees ahead. Winter staggered onto an empty street. She spotted a bench and hurried to sit down. Just a few minutes to rest before going to the hospital, she told herself.
She laid down on her back and stared up at the black sky. The nothingness weighed down on her. Miles and miles of nothingness. What time was it, anyway? Would the other doctors be suspicious if the Plague Saint showed up to the hospital early? Whatever, she could make up an excuse. They’d believe her. They always did, just like they’d believed Marcus’s lies. Idiots.
Winter blinked, and the sky was a pale gray. Sunlight crept over the horizon. She jolted upright. A few people walked by and shot her dirty looks. Judging by how they were dressed, they were probably far more well off than her family. Business owners, maybe. Or, hell, they could have been city council members.
Winter hopped off the bench and stumbled a few steps. Her stomach growled. Where was she? How far was the hospital from here? She walked to the nearest intersection and studied the street signs. She didn’t recognize Ash Street, but Stone Ave ran up the east side of the city.
She walked into the street and paused halfway across when a glimpse of the church between buildings caught her eye. That was farther than she expected. She must have veered south walking back. Well, if the church was that far, the hospital was going to be a thirty-minute walk. She didn’t know where the trolley stops were in this area, and they’d be full of people trying to get to work anyway.
Speaking of trolleys, the ringing of a bell made Winter’s head snap to the right. A trolley was rolling straight toward her, and the conductor was shouting at her to get out of the street. She darted to the sidewalk.
Her stomach growled again. “Ugh, fine!” she snapped, louder than she meant to. People were giving her weird looks. Ignoring them, she kept walking and scanned buildings until she spotted a cafe.
She dug out the cash she kept in her coat as she walked in. The only people inside were a man reading the paper in the corner, a woman encouraging her son to eat a pastry, and the girl working behind the counter. All eyes moved to her as she entered.
“Uh.” Winter’s gaze flickered to the woman, who looked away when Winter met her gaze. She turned back to the menu. “I guess I’ll have a croissant and the biggest, strongest coffee you can give me. To go.”
The girl lifted an eyebrow. “Sure thing.”
Winter paid her and sat down as far from the other patrons as she could while she waited. She turned to look out the window and finally understood why everyone was looking at her. Her faint reflection was ragged, with unruly hair and bags under her eyes. Winter glared at the girl staring back at her for a moment before pulling out the journal and flipping through it.
Minutes later, the employee brought Winter her order. Winter eagerly took her breakfast and left the building. She ate the croissant in a few large bites before moving on to chugging the coffee, relishing the way it burned her tongue.