Dustin Thomason - 12.21

“Containment’s essential,” he said. “But we need to explore possibilities for a cure, and we need the FDA to suspend its normal experimental protocols. We need to be able to test patients right away.”

“Are you talking about quinacrine and pentosan? You know the problems with them better than anyone.”

Quinacrine was an old treatment for prion disease that had now been shown to have little use. Pentosan was different: Derived from the wood of beech trees, it was once Stanton’s best hope. Unfortunately, the drug couldn’t pass the human blood–brain barrier, which protected neurons from dangerous chemicals. Stanton and his team had tried everything, from changing the drug’s physical structure to giving it through a shunt, but they had found no way to get pentosan into the brain without causing even more harm.

“Quinacrine won’t work,” Stanton said. “And the old problems with pentosan still exist.”

“So then what are we even talking about?” Cavanagh asked.

“We could start purifying antibodies.”

“After your lawsuit, Director Kanuth won’t hear anything about antibodies. Besides, you have absolutely no idea if they work in vivo , and we’re not using VFI victims as stage-one guinea pigs.”

“So that’s it for the people already sick?” Stanton asked. “That’s what we tell them and their families?”

“Don’t lecture me,” Cavanagh said. “I was there at the beginning of HIV when we were trying to shut down the bathhouses. From the first moment, there were researchers screaming about diverting money and resources to explore a cure, which is how we ended up razor-thin on containment, and more were infected. And how long did it take before they found something that could treat HIV? Fifteen years.”

Stanton was silent.

“Our priority right now is containment,” Cavanagh continued.

“Yours is educating the public about how to prevent the spread and figuring out how to destroy the prions once they’re outside the body. Once the number of cases stabilizes, we’ll talk more about a cure. Understand?”

From the look on her face, Stanton sensed that for now there would be no convincing his boss otherwise. “I understand,” he said.

When she spoke again, Cavanagh’s voice was calm. “Anything else on your mind I need to know, Gabe?”

“We need to get a team down to Guatemala now. With Ebola and hantavirus, we had teams in Africa in days to cut it off. Even if we get a quarantine here, it’ll be no use if we don’t shut it down at the original source. It’ll keep spreading around the world from there.”

“The Guatemalans don’t want any Americans who could have the disease entering their country. They won’t let us across the border. And I can hardly blame them, given that we still have no substantive proof it came from there.”

“We don’t even know what this thing is, Emily. Think about Marburg. We didn’t have any idea how to stop the virus until we found the original source. What if we could pinpoint where Volcy came from? If we can find these ruins where he was camped out? Then would they allow a team in there?”

“I have no idea.”

A voice came from behind them. “Deputy Cavanagh?” They turned to find a baby-faced administrator holding a folder labeled confidential.

They were the results of the blood for the patients in the original contact group.

Cavanagh grabbed the folder. “How many positives?” she asked.

“Nearly two hundred,” the administrator said.

Two hundred patients with VFI. More than had ever been diagnosed with mad cow, and they’d only known about VFI for forty-eight hours.

Cavanagh glanced up at Stanton, and flipped quickly to the final pages, toward the end of the alphabet. He realized she was searching for his name.

AT THE NORTH END OF THE GETTY CAMPUS, CHEL AND HER ATTORNEY sat in the main administrative office. They were across the table from senior members of the board, the museum’s head curator, and an agent from ICE. Everyone wore eye shields, per the latest CDC recommendations, and everyone had a copy of Chel’s official statement in front of them.

Dana McLean, head of one of the largest venture-capital funds in the country and chairman of the board of trustees, leaned back in her chair as she spoke. “Dr. Manu, we have to issue a formal suspension without pay pending further review. You’ll have to stop all museum-related activities until a final decision is made.”

“What about my staff?”

“They’ll be supervised by the curator, but if it’s found there was anyone else involved in the illegal activities, they’ll be put under review as well.”

“Dr. Manu,” one board member chimed in. “You claim Dr. Chacon had no idea what you were doing, but then why was he here with you on the night of the eleventh?”

Chel looked at her defense lawyer, Erin Billings. When Billings nodded for her to answer the question, Chel tried to maintain an even tone. “I never told Rolando what I was working on. I asked him to come in and answer some restoration questions for me. But he never saw the codex.”

With everything she’d confessed to in her statement, the group had no reason not to believe her. This was the one lie she felt good about.

“You should know that we’ll be looking back at all of your records for any other evidence of professional misconduct,” the ICE agent, Grayson Kisker, told her.

“She understands,” her attorney said.

“What will happen to the codex?” Chel asked.

“It’ll be returned to the Guatemalans,” McLean told her.

Kisker said, “But because the illegal transaction happened on American soil, we’ll be the ones filing criminal charges against you.”

Even after the CDC called to inform her that she’d tested negative for any prion in her blood, Chel had felt numb. The last day had been the most overwhelming mix of guilt and confusion and shock in her life. She knew she’d eventually be fired outright and that she’d lose her teaching position at UCLA as well.

But after everything she’d seen, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

Chel and Billings stood from the table. Chel tried to prepare herself to gather her things from her lab for the last time.

Then Kisker’s cell rang. He listened to someone on the other end of the line, a strange look creeping across his face.

“Yes,” he said, glancing at Chel. “I’m here with her now.” Slowly, he held his cellphone in her direction. His voice was almost shy. “My boss wants to talk to you.”

THE AFTERNOON SUN beat down on Chel as she descended the Getty garden walkway into the flowery jungle that sat at the lowest point of the museum grounds, below all the buildings, but still high above L.A.. Visitors said the views from the museum-on-the-mountain were better than the art itself, but Chel loved the gardens here most of all. Finding herself alone among the pink and red bougainvillea, she reached out to one of the papery flowers, rubbing it between her fingers. She needed a touchstone now.

She was listening to Dr. Stanton on her cellphone. “They haven’t found cases in Guatemala yet,” he said. “But if we can give them a more exact location for where Volcy came from, maybe we could send a team in.”

After talking to the director of ICE, Chel was told to call Stanton for further instructions. She was relieved to learn that he hadn’t been infected either. The glasses they each wore probably had given them some small amount of protection, he’d told her quickly, as if it weren’t important, before launching in.

“What do you know now about where it might be?”

“It has to be somewhere in the southern highlands,” Chel said. She reached out, ripped one of the pink bougainvillea flowers off its stem, and tossed it into the stream. She surprised herself with how roughly she did it.