Quaranteam - The Upstart's Knight Ch. 09

"That's something right?"

"I guess," she sniffed. "But I don't know if that makes it worse. Knowing that out of all the people I've known, there's a load that just aren't there now and I have no idea." There was another pause, followed by the sound of creeping realisation. "...that's what happened to Tom and the others isn't it? They're all just fucking dead aren't they?"

"I think so." Ethan's reply was quiet. He still hadn't quite come to terms with the idea that was what had happened to their former boss, Tom, and the rest of their colleagues. He was only dealing with it by avoiding looking reality in the face for too long, leaving a cold unrealised space where those emotions should be.

"Like millions of others. And I just carried on going? Didnae let myself notice what was happening to them because I was so caught up in my own meaningless shit."

He could tell she was grappling with the same sense of survivor's guilt that he had, the hurt of what was going on somehow amplified by the fact they were still there and others weren't. "You can't blame yourself for that. I've seen how hard you've worked just to keep going."

"Keeping myself going so I could stay shut away watching stupid films and frigging myself off to shitty porn?"

It's not like he'd found the time to do anything more, and he knew that wasn't the point. "To keep ourselves feeling human."

Aoife's distress began to stray towards undirected anger as she struggled to make sense of things. "For what though? We're working til we break just to lie to people. All this has been going on, the world's fucked and we've been here making sure people don't know what's happening to the folks they love, selling them the same old shite instead. How many people got sick because no-one was telling them what they needed to hear?"

"You know it's not that simple."

Her volume rose, becoming emphatic. "Not that simple? This is some shady bullshit and we're right in the middle of it Ethan."

"I don't like it either but it's not like we're really being left with a choice anymore."

"What do you mean there's no choice? Of course there's a choice! None of this shite about people not being trusted, or it being worse if they find out, because that's not the point. We've no right not to let people know what's happening to them and their families. I saw what the team in Edinburgh were putting together but why are we even waiting on that? They should all be in the know, not tomorrow or next week but now."

Ethan could practically picture how animated she must be on the other end of the line as she voiced questions he kept going back to. "And if we do that we lose the US's support for the vaccine and lose the one bit of light we have. That's not a choice."

There was a sudden silence, leaving him confused as to what he'd just said that would cut Aoife's passionate objection dead the way it just had.

"What do you mean a vaccine?"

The question caught Ethan by surprise, as he struggled to work out how she could know about DuoHalo and what the Edinburgh team were doing, without having learnt about Gemivax. It didn't seem reasonable that anyone would have told her about one but not the other.

Aoife pressed again, her words suddenly slowing, as if pleading with him. "Ethan, what do you mean a vaccine?"

"How has no-one told you about that," he replied, disbelieving. "The US pharma company Veraxiontic has a treatment for DuoHalo but their government is only giving us support if we follow their timetable for going public. I thought you said you knew about Project Upstart."

"Project Upstart's telling people about the virus and how it's the end of the world," she said, quietly.

"No. The teams in London and Scotland are working out how to tell people about the virus. Project Upstart's what we're doing at Taymont, preparing the public campaign for the rollout of the vaccine. How did you find out about DuoHalo without hearing that?"

There was more quiet on the other end of the line, an awkward pregnant pause that let him know the answer wasn't simple. Or one that Aoife felt was easy to share.

"I sort of saw some files on a drive I probably wasn't meant to have access to."

Her response was sheepish, and thick with understatement and omission that left him in no doubt what she actually meant had happened. And Ethan was left with a new sweep of anxiety at the trouble that might be waiting between the lines, ready to go with all of his other stresses. Along with an unexpected dash of anger at her. That she could have done something so obviously stupid that now risked upsetting things even further, just as he could start to see a way through things.

"Shit, how dumb do you want to be Aoife..."

"I know."

"If you get caught..."

"I know!"

He was suddenly aware of the phone feeling more uncomfortable in his hand, his mouth slightly dry. But then Aoife spoke again, and those new concerns were swallowed up by the much larger ones he had for the green haired girl as her distress showed through.

"I know. But fuck, you can't tell me I was wrong for thinking something was up." She talked rapidly, the emotions in her voice fraying again with panic as she tried to justify herself. And he couldn't tell if she was more worried about the consequences, or how he would react. "I'm not stupid. I just never thought it was going to be something like this. How are you meant to expect something that huge? And I've been freaking out since I saw it and-"

Ethan breathed, cutting across her in an attempt at reassurance. "Ok. Ok...Aoife, I don't care how you saw it. All I give a shit about is making sure you're ok." And he meant it. Something bubbled up inside him, and shoved judgement aside. Forget how things were meant to be done, all that mattered was her. "We can't let people know you were breaking any rules. I'm off the site for work right now but I have permission to tell you about most of this when I get back anyway so it's not going to matter. I just need you to hold on for a few more hours for me and we're going to try and make sense of this for each other, ok?"

There was a sense of her relaxing, trying to hold herself together with the promise of him being there, until she landed on a detail of what he said. "Wait, where are you anyway?"

"Nottingham."

The idea that he'd travelled to a city hours away alarmed her. "Nottingham!? Why the fuck are you in Nottingham when there's a hell virus destroying the planet?"

He leaned back, looking around Alex's spare bedroom and took stock of the fact he was in another woman's apartment as they spoke and realising there were certain things about Gemivax it would be wrong to try and disclose to her on the phone. Not that 'I think I might be in love with you but I'm sleeping with 5 other women' was going to be simple face to face either, but he owed her to be looking in her eyes when he tried.

"It's a very, very long story. To do with the vaccine, which has enough wrinkles that I need to tell you about in person."

"Oh..."

Ethan was left waiting for her to continue, practically able to hear the introspection. "Don't go quiet on me again, talk to me Aoife."

"It's nothing, just, when you said there was a vaccine I let myself hope a bit. But the way you just talked about there being wrinkles, you sounded just like you do when you're trying to say something nice about a Roger Corman film."

She knew him too well. It might only have been a few months since they'd met, but the pandemic had made sure that felt like a lifetime, with enough unguarded moments that she could instantly spot when he was diplomatically leaving things out. Just as he could tell that she was looking to him for something to cling onto.

"You can let yourself hope, trust me. It's just going to take a little explaining."

Normally he would expect Aoife to make a joke to a statement like that. Maybe something about not trusting anyone who could tolerate listening to house music unironically. But she didn't, instead simply saying, "ok. I trust you."

They ended up talking for a while longer, filling the air with neither of them willing to be the one to cut things short. They reminisced about co-workers that Aoife realised they'd lost, wondered out loud about friends from school or distant relations and speculated about celebrities. Talking about which members of the Expendables was most likely to be able to drop kick DuoHalo if it went near them might not have been realistic, but hearing Aoife's laughter, no matter how strained it was, was better than hearing her tears. Besides, It was what they did. Made fun and deflected until the pressure didn't seem quite so unbearable as it was alone.

It was only a knock at Aoife's door, thirty minutes later, that interrupted them. She excused herself, and it was only as she returned that Ethan realised how much of the strain had left her voice as they'd talked, and how quickly it had all come back again.

"I need to go. We've got problems with that satellite uplink again," she said with a familiar exhaustion.

"I thought you had a telecoms engineer for that?"

"Nothing I can't check over. Nat was working most of the night so I've got her on an enforced break."

"And when did you last take a break? A real one."

The absence of any attempt at an answer left him in no doubt that it wasn't one she wanted to give him, the air filled only by a tired sigh before she spoke again. "Ethan?"

"Yeah?"

"You meant what you said? That we're going to get each other through this."

There was something about how she asked the question, the way her brash Scottish energy had gradually been stripped down to something vulnerable that left him hurting. Wanting to put his arms around her until she had no doubts about just how much he meant it. He glanced at the wall separating him from Alex's bedroom, where the redhead was still imprinting, and practically felt himself tear in two, pulled between all the places he was needed.

"Yeah. I meant it. I..."

He caught himself, before small words that felt far too easy came out far too early.

"You mean a lot to me," he settled for instead.

She gave a small laugh. "Well, I suppose if I have to put up with an English wanker you could be worse. Just...make sure you actually come and find me when you get back, ok?"

Ethan went to reply, but a blip from his phone indicated she'd hung up on him, getting the last word in rather than lingering in an admission. But as he lay back down on the bed, he said the words on his tongue, even though she couldn't hear them.

"For you? I promise."

******

Aoife had to admit that the walk up to the satellite dish was actually something approaching pleasant on the odd occasion where the elements weren't out to get her. She could have used one of Palisade Service's 4x4s to drive herself out to the site, but almost as rare as the good weather, she found herself wanting the walk, a chance to clear her head. To feel like the world wasn't coming apart underneath her. The view from the hill bent down towards Taymont Hall and out over the Peak District National Park, and from up there it was almost possible to kid herself that everything was exactly how it had always been. Idyllic. Normal.

Speaking with Ethan had helped, like she knew it would. But it was only once the weight of the world had become more overwhelming than the stubbornness of her feelings towards him that she was willing to admit that. And even now Aoife could feel the relative ease he'd left her with slowly fleeting away, leaving her just as hurt and in need of him as she'd been before. For a moment she comforted herself with knowing that at least the idiot hadn't gotten himself killed yet, only for thought to be replaced with a sting of guilt for all the others who had died, and how that mattered less to her.

The world could be ending and there she was, up a stupid fucking hill, wrapped up in her own exhausted, teenage bullshit.

The dish came into view, looking much the same as it had looked the last time she and Nat had been up there, sat among autumn mud and huddled granite outcrops. Some of the hardware required a lot of work still, but between them they'd managed to at least get a replacement cable hooked up and something resembling basic functionality. She allowed herself a wave of relief, reasoning quickly that the latest outages she'd been asked to check on were almost certainly due to something as mundane as a loose wire somewhere. It might even be an easy enough fix, she thought, to get back in time for a nap before the evening news bulletins generated their inevitable repair tickets. And the realisation gave her the energy she needed to haul her tool bag over the final stretch a little quicker than she would have done.

Aoife stopped however as she got within the final few metres with a nasty feeling stirring in her stomach. It had rained that morning, the mud fresh and the tire tracks from the last trip they'd made in the Land Rover long since washed away. So why were there footprints freshly peppered into the earth around the dish? And why did the tread marks look different to the now familiar ones left by the standard issue boots given out by Palisade to the Taymont staff. At least two sets of them.

Her heart raced as she slowly lowered her toolbag. Her eyes did their best to be alert despite her fatigue as she scanned the nearby rocks, looking for signs anyone else was there. Chances were that whoever had been up here had already gone, but then if anyone had seen enough movies to fill their heads with worst case scenarios of how this might play out, it was her. And in that moment her imagination definitely wasn't on her side.

The terrain that had previously seemed peaceful and reassuring suddenly felt painfully isolating, and it took her a moment to find the courage to call out.

"If anyone's there I don't mean you any bother. I'm just an engineer."

There was no reply other than the wind, even after what felt like an eternity of looking, listening and waiting. It was only after Aoife started to feel foolish that she dared herself to move forward and wander into the dish's shadow to inspect the tracks, wondering if there was some more innocent explanation for everything than the one she'd jumped to. But the prints were definitely there, one set larger than the other.

She stooped down to look and as she did so her adrenaline spiked. There was a rustle of movement behind her. Someone rushing, out from behind one of the closest rocky outcrops, with heavy footfalls that slapped against the damp ground. Aoife spun around in time to see a man bearing down upon her, a purposeful blur in a heavy coat, almost a foot taller than she was.

She yelled. Felt him grab at her shoulder. And as she tried to pull away she lost her balance, toppling over landing with a wet thud next to the thick cable that ran from the satellite.

Aoife looked up, and as she did so, it was with the barrel of something long and metallic pointed at her face.