Travis Starnes
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No Good Deed (Destiny Saga #5) - Chapter 26
🕑 Added 2018-08-17 16:41:07 +0000 UTCWhen I’d said I was going to get tired of being on bed rest for multiple weeks, I hadn’t known the half of it. A week and a half into my recovery period, and I was starting to go stir crazy just laying here.
The girls had come in to keep me company, and I’d spent a very strange couple of days with Mrs. Polaski as she had me take one test after another. Our original schedule called for us to be tested over a week and a half, with the tests spread out to one each day. I’m not sure if it was some sick game of hers, or she just wanted to see how far she could push my abilities.
She didn’t actually know about my abilities, but she’d spent enough time with me to realize the girls, and I weren’t average students. I think she suspected there was more I was capable of that I didn’t show in school. Whether she chalked that up to laziness, or something deliberate, I couldn’t say. I did get the distinct impression that she was trying to learn more about me though.
Every time I finished a test, she would just set another one down in front of me, until Alex showed up and told her I needed my rest. I swear I could have kissed Alex in those moments.
Not that the tests were hard. I’d done the work to study for them, and my memory was basically eidetic by now, so the recall was really easy. It’s just mind-numbing to mark in scantron after scantron or write out long rambling essays about the themes of Midsummer's Nights dreams, or the causes of the Civil War. I was going out of my mind, when she finally announced I was done with all my tests.
The girls couldn’t stay with me as much as I’d have wanted, because they still had almost a week of classes, and they wanted to finish out the school year and say goodbye to all our friends. Alex had already told me I wasn’t going to be up and around by the time the school year ended, which was kind of a bummer.
Josh was missing, and Amanda was pissed at me, but I was still tight with the rest of our gang, who’d seen past the front Josh had put up to how he was starting to go off the deep end. They’d all come by to see me, which was nice. We’d talked, and they’d all promised to visit us at our new place when they could.
Several had worked it out to do volunteer work at the center, both to help their college applications, and because they wanted to spend more time with the girls. Several had already spent some weekends down there helping. There seemed to be a never-ending demand for volunteers.
Still, as the year came to a close and I laid on my back in the hotel at night, after everyone had headed home, I got a little melancholy. When I started last year, I’d been worried about what High School would mean for me. My adoptive father was dead, and Margaret had moved Tina and me to a new town where we didn’t know anyone.
The rollercoaster of the last two years had been pretty extreme, but I think the thing I was most surprised at was the friends I'd made. Not just the girls, although that was something, but all the people in our group. Now I was done with school two years early and heading into something new. I wouldn’t ever admit it to anyone else, but I was a little terrified.
We were set up really well and had plans for how we were going to take everything forward, but there were still so many unanswered questions.
Thankfully, after the third week of bed rest, I got a reprieve of sorts. Jonathan showed up with Douglass in tow.
“Hey, guys,” I said as they’d walked through the door.
Vicki had left about an hour before to help pack up the house, so I’d spent the last hour just staring at the wall.
“We’ve got good news!” Douglass said excitedly.
“You’ve decided to go around Alex and bust me out of this place?”
“Not quite,” Jonathan said with a laugh. “We do have news, however.”
“Ok, consider me properly in a state of suspense.”
“We’ve worked out the kinks, and several internal runs on the battery look good. Your Colonel Ron has managed to arrange another demonstration with NASA.”
“That is good news. What did we finally find out about the failures?”
I’d been getting regular reports, but they’d slowed to a trickle while I was recovering. I think Alex had put her foot down about how much work people were bringing me. Until that moment, I don’t think Mom realized all the paperwork they’d been sending up to me to read over every week since they all moved to the new facilities. The one thing that I hadn’t seen in any of the reports, was what - exactly - failed.
“We found a manufacturing defect in the material we were using for the solid-state storage. Going back over it, the same defect is in every prototype we made. It seems this failure isn’t something that happens every time, or very often with the defect, but it’s a ticking time bomb.”
“Literally. While I’m not happy we had to wait until our demonstration with NASA to find out about it, I guess its better that we get through all the trials, rather than have our battery go up in space and fail.”
“That’s true.”
“So what are we doing about it?”
“We retooled how we were manufacturing the plates and our quality assurance of them. It’s going to take more time to produce and cost more, but in the long run, it will be worth it.”
“So they are on board with another test?”
“Yes,” Jonathan said. “There are a lot of skeptical people over there still, and it’s going to take more on our part to really sell them on it now, but I think we’ll be ok. Aaron has done a really good job of calming them down. He reminded them of a couple of other high profile failures that happened on parts that are now standard on most stuff NASA sends up.”
“I’m sure these guys like to be reminded of their failures.”
‘Well, they weren't NASA’s failures, just failures of the producers of those other parts. It did make it clear to them they can benefit from second chances.”
“We’ll still be fighting an uphill battle,” Douglass said. “There are some people who’ve already made up their minds. Luckily, we don’t have to convince everyone. Just the right people.”
“So when does the test happen.”
“Two weeks.”
I looked over at Alex, who’d walked in a moments after Jonathan and Douglass had shown up, probably so she could chase them out of the room if they stayed too long.
“Will I be out by then?”
“Maybe,” she said. “You’re healing well, faster than I could have ever dreamed, but you still need more time. You’d probably heal faster if you weren’t being interrupted so much by all these visits.”
“These visits are the only thing keeping me sane.”
She just harrumphed at me.
“Just keep me in the loop on what’s going on,” I said the Douglass, ignoring her grumpiness. “I’ll work on the warden, here, and see if I can get out on parole.”
She glared at me, but I ignored it.
“What else is going on?”
They gave me a rundown on what had happened since I’d been laid up. Things were going well on the desalination plant. We were running full bore and already had it in several of the ships MilTech had refurbished. We were out of the trial phase all the way, and the technology was proving itself and making us some good money to boot.
Jonathan also had some news on more fallout from Richards' downfall. They’d managed to round up a bunch of his flunkies that had gone into hiding at the same time. With Richards dead, the flunkies had started nosing around other criminals, looking for new employment, which put them back on the FBI's radar.
I was happy to hear there. It seemed like no one notable, or at least no one who might decide to come and finish what Richards had started, was still in the wind.
Jonathan and Douglass finished their rundown and left.
“Since you in business mode, I guess I should tell you that Angela and I also have some news.”
“You’re going to let me out of here?” I said, lifting my head off the pillow, which was as close to sitting up as I could get.
“Not a chance.”
I let my head flop back down and said, “Damn.”
“I probably should wait for Angela to get here before I tell you, but honestly, I’m too excited. We got word today that we’ve been cleared to test our ‘protocol’ on our first live patients.”
“Really? When? How many people?”
“In the proposal we submitted, our plan was to test five patients in the initial batch and then after the reports on that batch cleared. As for when not until July. Angela wanted to leave some time open at the end of this month and the beginning of June for your move, which actually works because we have to go over our protocol a few more times.”
“Why? I thought you'd already submitted it.”
“We submitted a draft of our protocol. Considering that, while we know without a doubt that this treatment will cure everyone we give it to; it doesn’t work like we’re telling the FDA it does. We have to make sure we’ve covered ourselves enough to explain how it’s working, without giving away what’s really happening.”
“Is that even possible?”
“We think so. For the FDA, unless something goes wrong, they generally go off of the results submitted to them. Its how medication has slipped through in the past. They get test results from the team conducting the trial as well as the patient’s primary physician has signed off on. In those other cases, results were fudged, and only later when the medication was widely used and people started getting sick was it looked into. We know our medication isn’t going to go bad since it’s not really medication.”
“What if a genetic negative slips through?”
“That’s our big weak spot, and why our ‘treatment’ will have to be performed only by us. We’ll have to screen multiple times before we put anyone through the change, just to be sure.”
“If it’s as successful as it’s going to be, aren’t pharmaceutical companies going to try and backward engineer us?”
“Probably, but I’m not worried about that.”
“Really?”
“Think about it. They would need to make the leap that our ‘medication’ is essentially genetically mutated plasma that itself mutates the DNA of the patient, creating a new strain of antibodies, that aggressively seeks out and changes the foreign substance into something the body can absorb and use. I’ve studied your biology for a full year, and I can barely wrap my brain around it.”
“I guess that’d be a bit much.”
“By default, people see what they want to see, or at least what they expect to see. It’s what makes people able to live next to serial killers and never suspect or why average Germans were able to live a few miles from concentration camps and never suspect. In hindsight, the clues are there, but since it’s so unfathomable, you just look past it and see something else.”
“That makes sense.”
“The key is, we need to fly under the radar. That means we are going to have to do something that none of us, you especially, are going to like.”
“What?” I said in a flat tone.
I had a guess at what she was about to say since it’s something I’d already thought about but hoped we’d avoid.
“Some of the people we treat will have to get a version that doesn’t work.”
“Because if it were one-hundred percent effective, someone would notice,” I said, again in the flat, emotionless tone.
“Yes. I’m glad you got that. I was worried you’d dig in your heels.”
“I’m glad everyone thinks I’m so unreasonable.”
“I don’t think that, Caspian.”
“No, but I know you, and pretty much everyone else, thinks I take my ethical decisions too seriously.”
“I wouldn’t put it like that.”
“I know. I know you guys are just being practical and looking out for all of our best interests, mine especially. I also know that I’ve hobbled us at times when I ‘dig in my heels’ and made things harder. This isn’t one of those times. I figured this out a while ago. If we help everyone, there’s no way we won’t be noticed; which in turn, makes it probable that we won’t even be around anymore to help anyone, once people in a place to make money off of my biology get into the game. I’d rather help half the people we could, but operate for years; over helping everyone we talk to, but have to shut down too soon.”
Mom came into the room but didn’t say anything, just closed the door and stood back to listen.
“So you get it.”
“I do. I also have some rules we’re going to have to go by.”
“Of course you do.”
“One. Every child we help gets the real thing. Two, while I know we can’t do this one hundred percent, I’d prefer we give the ineffective versions to much older people or single people. If we’re going to only help some of the people, I’d prefer we default to people who will be able to enjoy their newfound lease on life for a while or people with families.”
“So you’re going to choose who lives and who dies?” Mom asked from her spot by the door.
“No. We aren’t saying this person gets it because they deserve it and this person doesn’t because their bad. It’s not a judgment call. We are giving the limited number of cures we have at a given time to those who’ll objectively get the most benefit out of it. Parents with young children have not just their lives they will get to live, but their lives will also affect their children’s. Helping them, helps two generations, and one dose affects exponentially more people. That’s not playing God, that’s making decisions based on the greatest impact.”
“You’re growing up,” she said with a smile. “I agree, I just wanted to make sure you were making the decision for the right reason.”
“Great. We all agree. So, can I get out of here, now?”
“No. You can, however, have a nap.” Alex said.
“Uhh, I am going to go insane.”
“You’ll live,” Mom said. “Zoe said she’ll be back in a few hours to spend some time with you. They were busy last night coming up with a schedule to have people keep you company at all times, or at least until we kick them out so you can get some sleep.”
“I appreciate them thinking about me, but I know they’ve all got a lot to do. They don’t have to have someone here all the time.”
“Cas, only the fact that they knew you were counting on them to keep the charity program moving forward has them from all camping out on the floor all day and night. You forget that you mean more to these girls than literally anyone else on the planet. They are genetically tied to you in a way no one else is. They are holding to their responsibilities, but it’s killing them that you’re here by yourself. They’ve roped in some others like Celia and Megan to take shifts keeping you company.”
“As long as no ones giving up something they should or would rather be doing to just sit next to the bed, holding my hand.”
“I can guarantee what they’d rather be doing is holding your hand, but they know how you feel. Don’t worry, they’re being very responsible about the whole thing. Just be gracious and let them mother you, ok. You’re the one who wanted an army of girlfriends without thinking through what would happen if you got sick.”
“It’s not that I wanted...”
“I know, I know. I was teasing. Don’t be so sensitive.”
I rolled my eyes and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Good. Now, get some rest.”
I was feeling tired. I won’t say I wasn’t happy to learn I had some kind of Wolverinesque healing, even if that wasn’t exactly what I had. If it was up to me, though, I would have it take less out of me. I was exhausted all the time since I'd been shot, and was sleeping a minimum of twelve hours a day.
Alex explained it wasn’t that much different than how people got tired and slept so much when they had the flu. The body used the energy it would have burned to support the systems that naturally helped the human body recover. Since my body was recovering so much more than the normal body, like regrowing bone rather than, say fusing a broken bone, it required that much more energy.
Even though I was in bed all day, she was still feeding me almost four-thousand calories a day just to fuel my system so it could heal. I accused her of trying to make me fat, but she swore she’d worked out the math. Since she didn’t even know I’d be able to heal to this degree before Richards shot me, I found that doubtful. I suspected she was varying my calorie intake and making notes. She was a researcher at heart, and me being stuck in bed was the perfect time for her to experiment away. Normally she had to make do with me stopping in every few weeks to give blood samples or let her poke away at me.
I spent another month in bed. I hadn’t spent this much time being still, in my entire life, and I was becoming a pain in the ass. I was glad the girls had worked out a schedule to keep me company pretty much all the time, but I could tell I was wearing on them too. I would owe everyone big when I was finally up and around, considering how much of an asshole I was becoming in my convalescence.
Things did happen while I was on my back.
The first was that I passed my tests. The girls were allowed to walk with the senior class since they were graduating early. The school actually made a big deal of it, since they’d only ever had a handful of people graduate early in the history of the town, let alone five in one go. The girls told me they’d called my name, and Zoe had taken my diploma for me, which was nice.
I got a little bit wistful, which surprised me. I’d never really loved school, and considering everything that happened to me in the last two years, I wouldn’t have thought I’d care much that I wasn’t going back. Holding my diploma though, I realized I would miss it. There’s something to be said for watching the doors close on one chapter of your life that makes you reminisce.
The other major thing that happened was that the NASA tests went off perfectly. We didn’t have a repeat of the previous failures, although they required repeated tests and additional stress tests to prove to them that we’d actually solved the issues and it wasn’t something that was going to happen again.
Contracts were being signed, and our solar panels and batteries were going into a satellite that would go up sometime in the fall. I’d always been somewhat of a nerd, and the idea something I’d had a hand in was going into space was pretty exciting.
We also had some contracts with the Army for the new battery. They liked that it was solid state, less susceptible to problems their traditional batteries faced and had a higher capacity. I wasn’t sure where they’d use it, since the contracts all went through MilTech, and the end uses were classified. We may be the original developer, but the actual integration was being done by MilTech. It’s the whole reason we started working with them since they had all the clearances needed to actually get this kind of thing done. Aaron promised he knew what they were doing, for the most part, and everything was fine. Since he’d gone through the change, I felt ok taking his word for it.
By late June I was out of bed, and moving around. I felt weak as a kitten, and Alex said I needed to stay in a wheelchair until the middle of July. At least I wasn’t in one room looking at the same walls every day, so I took it without too much complaining. Zoe found a music festival the week after I was scheduled to be up and moving again, and we all agreed that’d be a great way to celebrate being self-mobile again.
The day they wheeled me out of Alex and Mom’s new facilities, was one of the happiest I could remember. Sun and the smell of outside air were amazing, even if it was the soupy mixture of east Texas in the summer.
I was surprised when they didn’t head towards the highway that would take us back to Alice, but instead headed towards the new house.
“Alex’ll have your ass if she learns you aren’t taking me straight home for more ‘rest.’”
“She knows about this,” Mom said from up front.
They’d rented a wheelchair accessible van, since Alex didn’t want me walking at all if I could help it. Just getting in and out of it was almost more than she’d been willing to accept.
“We’re headed to the new house?”
“Yep,” Zoe said.
They all had goofy smiles, so I knew something was up.
“What? They finished the next stage of construction? I’ve seen the plans, we don’t need to go by and see it now. Don’t tell Alex, but I am feeling pretty tired.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be fast,” Zoe said.
I laid my head back on the wheelchairs headrest and closed my eyes. Their new lab wasn’t far from our new house, so it didn’t take us long to get there. I opened my eyes when they stopped at the gate, which had gone in shortly before Richards had shot me. They’d made it and the wall pretty high, something Jawarski had insisted on.
I was prepared to make some kind of comment when the gates opened, hoping they’d get the point and take us home so I could get some more sleep. Just the act of moving into the wheelchair had made me feel weak, and I was starting to get a little annoyed that they’d decided now was a good time for another tour of the construction site.
I felt the words catch in my throat as I looked through the opening gates.
The construction equipment that had been all over when I’d been here last was gone. The scaffolding was gone. It looked like ... well, it looked like a house. A big ass house, but finished.
“Is it...?”
“Yes,” Mom said. “We got the construction rushed. Everything’s finished, and we’ve finished our move. We live here, now.”
“Really?”
Zoe looked at me, her heart in her eyes.
“Welcome home.”
The End
