He’d seen a patient only yesterday who claimed her eczema was cured after going on mesalamine for ulcerative colitis. And last week another patient who’d been scheduled for open-heart surgery to correct an atrioventricular canal defect he’d had since birth had insisted on a final round of tests because, as he put it, “I suddenly feel finer than a frog hair split three ways.”

Those final round of tests showed a man in perfect health. His heart had mysteriously healed.

He’d been taking a drug for migraines from the Phoenix Corporation for six months.

“Doctor? Are you all right?”

With the feeling he’d been staring at something huge and obvious and looking right through it, Dr. Petrov slowly set the data pad back on the counter. He looked at the nurse. He said, “Have you done something with your hair? You look . . . different.”

The nurse, blushing, reached up and touched her head. “Oh! Thank you, Doctor. No, my hair is the same. But I’m not wearing my glasses, maybe that’s it.”

Yes, that was it. She’d worn an elegant little pair of gold glasses since he’d known her. Without them, her face looked younger, brighter. “Got contacts, have you?”

She laughed self-consciously. “No. Funny thing is, I just haven’t seemed to need my glasses anymore. Last week I realized I hadn’t been wearing them all day, and was getting around fine. Which is strange because I had terrible vision, but . . . it just sort of . . . fixed itself.” She shrugged, still self-conscious. “Not that I’m complaining!”

The buzzing from the ceiling lights seemed suddenly a thundering racket in his ears. “What a stroke of luck,” he said to the nurse, feeling as if someone had just pulled the wool from over his eyes to reveal a new and quite monstrous landscape. “Tell me, nurse, are you by chance taking any kind of medication?”

The nurse blinked at him, surprised. “No, Doctor. Nothing.”

A little of the tightening in Dr. Petrov’s chest eased. “You’re sure? Nothing?”

“I’m sure. I hate taking pills; I have problems swallowing them.”

“What about injections? Inhalants? Sublingual drops?”

The nurse was beginning to look nervous. “Doctor, I don’t get sick. You know that; I’ve never missed a day of work. And I don’t have any health problems. You could say I’m as healthy as a horse.”

Coincidence, then. Dr. Petrov was beginning to feel a bit better, until the nurse added one final thing.

“Well, except for that time of the month.”

The doctor froze, staring at his attractive young nurse, who was now looking back at him sheepishly.

“I get terrible cramps the first day of my cycle, so I just started taking Femistrin a few months ago. They’re these tiny little pills, so I can get them down without too much trouble.”

“I see,” replied the doctor, from somewhere far outside himself. And see he did, but in the clarity of this sudden understanding came the knowledge that revealing what he had just deduced would bring him nothing but trouble, most likely of the fatal sort. So because Dr. Petrov was, above all things, a practical man, he shut his mouth, gave the nurse his best bland, doctorly smile, and dropped the subject.

As he went about the rest of his day, a small, secret part of him marveled at the way Man continually underestimated the subversive, creative genius of Mother Nature.

He wondered what She had in store for the human race next.

TWENTY-SIX

It was a five-hour ride to Lu and Magnus’s next stop, through a dark wasteland of empty roads, skeletal trees in rotted forests, and sluggish black rivers, their banks clogged with decaying trash. Lu had never been outside New Vienna, and was horrified at what the Earth had become, littered with the corpse of civilization. Everything was abandoned, the towns and streets and sky, and her sense of loneliness and despair was crushing.

How could the world ever be made new again?

The idea had taken root: this hopeless world made new. She’d only just admitted it to herself, and was mentally trying it on like a new dress to see if it fit. It bunched and puckered in places, scratchy and too tight, but the more she dwelled on the thought of a different sort of world as they rode, the more stubborn the thought became, until she eventually realized it was more than a possibility.

It was an inevitability. In its current form, the world was unsustainable. Left so long neglected, it would eventually perish, and so would the ragged dregs of life that still inhabited it.

Lu didn’t want the world to die. She wanted it to be, as she’d been, resurrected.

Her plan to this point had only revolved around getting her mother and father out of the IF’s prison, but as she and Magnus navigated through the charred ruins of Europe, the plan seemed too small in scope. She could rescue her parents, possibly even set free the other prisoners, but what then? Where could they go? Where could they hide where they wouldn’t be hunted? And if she were to free them, how would all those prisoners survive in a world designed specifically to destroy them?

No. Rescue couldn’t be the ultimate goal.

The ultimate goal needed to be the death of Sebastian Thorne.

The problem was, Lu had no idea how she might go about it. How could she get to him? Where the hell did the man even live?

Another dilemma: Killing Thorne wouldn’t be self-defense. It would be murder. Premeditated. First degree. That little detail was giving her already raw conscience hissy fits.

“We’re off at the next exit,” came Magnus’s voice through the ear bud in her helmet. He was ahead of her by a few yards, as he’d been the entire trip since they’d left Nola’s, navigating a safe path through roads and highways that were more than occasionally strewn with obstacles. She pulled up beside him and he glanced over. Through the helmet’s shield she saw his eyes, glossed with fatigue, and she wondered how much he’d slept last night, on his back on the floor beside her bed.

As he pulled his gaze away and returned to his place ahead of her, Lu wondered if either of them would ever enjoy a good night’s sleep again.

When finally they reached their destination, a small cabin tucked away deep in the German wilderness somewhere between New Frankfurt and Nuremberg, she was exhausted, too, as much from the wild careenings of her mind as from the journey.

Their hosts, a gray-haired couple in their late sixties who spoke only hushed, hesitant German, were as different from Nola and James as day from night. Words were few and supper was served without ceremony. Lu realized, watching them skitter about the small cabin like creatures of prey in a nighttime woods, that they were terrified. Of what they were risking, harboring her and Magnus. Of what might happen to them if they were caught.

If courage could be defined as the ability to do the thing that scares you most, these people were giants of bravery.

“Wir in ihrer schuld sind,” Lu said quietly to the woman after the supper dishes were cleared and she’d shown Lu to the cramped bedroom she and Magnus would be sharing. Another twin bed stared back mockingly at her from the middle of it.

The woman shook her head, then looked her in the eye. “No,” she answered in German. “The debt is ours. Had mankind been wise enough to stand up for what was right all those years ago, we wouldn’t be in the position we’re in now. The minute we turned our backs on you, we turned our backs on ourselves. That’s why we joined the Dissenters.” Her eyes were overbright. Her mouth was pinched. She looked as if she hadn’t truly slept in years. “There is only one way out of the fire, child, and that is to walk through it. But the Lord promises that if we have faith, we shall not be burned. And my faith could move mountains.”