Departure(54)

“Sabrina was terrified. We all were. She worked day and night, pushing herself to the brink. Ten days after the first cases, half the entire human population was dead.”

“How could it spread so quickly?”

“That was the question. What we discovered far too late was that the retrovirus could exist benignly in virtually any animal host. Every animal on earth is a host for countless viruses. Viruses exist to replicate, to spread their DNA, so they actually don’t want to harm their host; they want to exist undetected, replicating. And that’s exactly what this virus did. It was everywhere. Birds, fish, land animals, they were all carriers, and none of them were harmed, except for humans. We were the only host in which the virus caused death, but it didn’t harm humans at first. It lay dormant for days, then struck at once, quickly, killing without warning. I remember the horror on the day we learned that the entire human population was already infected, that there was no chance of containment or stopping the outbreak.”

My mind flashes back to the bodies I saw in the tents outside. The faces. Now I understand why I didn’t recognize them. I’d seen those people before, at the crash site, but they looked much younger then. It’s like they had aged decades during my trip to Stonehenge and back.

“The passengers from my flight, they’re infected too.”

“Yes. The virus is airborne. You were all exposed the second you crash-landed.”

“The virus still exists? Seventy-six years after the outbreak?”

“Eradicating it is impossible. It’s everywhere. We’d have to treat every animal on Earth. That’s impossible.”

I turn the revelation over in my head, trying to understand the implications. And I wonder, what will happen to me? Will I suffer the same fate as the bodies out there? My doppelg?nger continues on before I get a chance to ask.

“The virus, however, was about to become the least of our problems. Everyone thought the outbreak was the Titans’ solution: killing the population. Governments launched their dying armies against us, hoping we would capitulate and turn over a cure. We were immune to the condition, presumably because we had been given the pure form of the therapy, and that sealed the case against us. They killed sixty-two of us in the Titan War. We went into hiding, but we didn’t have to hide long. Forty days after the first cases, every person on the face of the planet—except for the remaining thirty-eight Titans—was dead.”

The graffiti in London, at Titan Hall—it all makes sense now. Every person on the planet dead? The magnitude of the revelation is overwhelming. In the cramped conference room, I sit stunned.

My words come out a whisper. “What do you want from us?”

“Your help. For the last seventy-six years, I and the remaining Titans have dedicated every waking hour to bringing your plane here. You and the rest of the passengers of Flight 305 are humanity’s only chance for survival.”





30





No pressure. Just the human race’s only chance at survival. For the last six days, I’ve had my hands full just trying to keep a hundred people alive, and it looks like I’ve failed at that. I ask Nicholas the obvious question: “What does that mean?”

“As I said, the retrovirus that triggers rapid aging is ubiquitous on the planet. We have no hope of eradicating it, but there is a solution: a vaccine.”

“You have a vaccine?”

“Sabrina, for all her faults, is sublimely intelligent. Within a year of the outbreak she had created a vaccine she thought was viable, though all she had to go on were computer models.”

It doesn’t make sense. The Titans are immune to the virus, and everyone is dead. What good is a vaccine? The answer seems just out of reach, but Nicholas speaks before I can, as if he’s reading my mind.

“A vaccine is our only chance of survival. We can’t eliminate the virus from the environment—we can only vaccinate the remaining humans who haven’t been exposed.”

“Wait—I thought you said everyone on the planet except for the Titans died.”

“Everyone on the planet did die.”

The genius of the plan hits me like a gust of cold air. “The orbital colony.”

“Exactly. For the last seventy-six years the five thousand inhabitants of Titan Alpha have been waiting for the day when they can return home and reclaim Earth. The children up there right now are the second generation who’ve been born looking not up at the stars but down at the ground, at a land they’ve never set foot on, a new frontier they’ve been told will someday be their home, as it was their ancestors’.”

“Incredible.”

“Those five thousand colonists are humanity’s last chance to repopulate the planet.”

“Then I don’t understand why we’re here. You have them. You have a vaccine.”

“A vaccine we weren’t one hundred percent sure would work. Imagine the colonists’ position. They have three life rafts—three vessels on which to send people down. But who do you choose? We felt the vaccine would be effective, but we weren’t certain. They asked us what our backup plan was, if the vaccine didn’t work for the people sent down on the first two rafts. What if we had only one raft left? What then?”

“You couldn’t risk it at that point.”