The Ends of the World (The Conspiracy of Us #3)(73)

"Like if they were to put it in a city's water supply," I said.

Elodie nodded. "Or aerosolize it. For the vaccine, though? It takes a drop of your blood per person. Even if we drained you dry, it wouldn't be enough to vaccinate a single Paris neighborhood, much less the whole world."

I pushed up my sleeves. It suddenly felt way too hot in here.

"Um, excuse me." We turned to find Nisha standing in the doorway. She and the entire science team had been based at the Order headquarters here in Paris, but while Stellan and I were gone, Elodie had moved them to the Dauphins' so we'd all be in one place. "I'm sorry to interrupt. We have an idea."

• • •

The lab tables and microscopes looked out of place in the Dauphins' ornate dining rooms. On one of the tables, Nisha and the rest of the scientists were crowded around a Plexiglas box with a tiny white mouse sniffing at its corners. I leaned down and touched my finger to the glass. The little mouse nosed at it.

"As you know, we had been attempting to deactivate the virus," Nisha said in her soft accent as we gathered around, "but that has proved impossible so far-and now that the Saxons have your blood, that avenue is closed for the moment anyway. When we learned the cure was really a vaccine, though, we wondered whether we could use the same mechanism of the Great modification in Mr. Korolev's blood to make the vaccine more effective. It looks promising."

Elodie twisted one of her small gold earrings. "Promising how?"

"We are using the Great modification in a specific way to make only the right parts of the mouse's cells replicate quickly."

Elodie was the first to understand. "I thought you were experimenting with altering Avery's blood. Like, in a vial."

"Unfortunately," Nisha said steadily, "it would be impossible to modify the blood once it's already outside the body."

All the curtains were drawn, and it was dim enough that it could have been any time of day as we looked at each other over the makeshift chemistry lab. "I don't understand," Stellan said. "You said my blood takes the tiny bit of virus in her blood and multiplies it so fast it becomes deadly. Wouldn't this just trigger that same process inside her?"



       
         
       
        

"We'd be using what we've learned about the modification, not necessarily your blood, as it were. And we are attempting to isolate certain parts of the cells. Small distinctions, but important. The hope is that it will affect only the amount of vaccine in the blood, and not turn into the virus and kill . . . the mouse."

I felt everyone's gaze on me.

"No." Stellan stepped in front of me like he might block me from what they were thinking. "You're not using me to try to turn her into a walking vaccination clinic. Not using what we think might be some science from thousands of years ago and that we've studied for a few days."

I glanced out the window to an eerily empty Louvre courtyard. "The vaccine's the only chance we have left, isn't it?"

No one answered.

"The serum is ready," said another of the scientists, approaching the box with a full syringe. I'd seen her at the Order meeting. Half of the Order crew we'd seen at the meeting was here, in fact.

"This is a trial to see whether this mouse can get the vaccine in its blood?" I said.

"Not exactly. The science is complicated. You would be the only one able to grow the vaccine in your blood, but these trials give us a better idea of whether the virus will take hold instead. If you wanted to go through with this, we would do trials until we found a version of the serum that did not kill the mouse, and then . . ."

Then try it on me. And either it would work and we'd have a way to distribute the vaccine-or it wouldn't and I'd die of the virus myself.

"Show me," I said.

Nisha nodded. "Subject T-twenty-three. Commencing trial of substance two-point-six," she said into a handheld recorder. She picked up the mouse and injected it with the syringe's contents.

Stellan gripped the Plexiglas. Across from us, Jack and Elodie peered in, too.

When Nisha set it back down, the mouse shook itself, then darted across the box. Darted back. After a couple of minutes, Nisha dropped in a lettuce leaf, and the mouse ran to it, nibbling at the edge. "If it's feeling well enough to eat, that's a good sign," she whispered excitedly.

"How long would it take for it to get infected?" Stellan asked.

"It happens quickly in the mice. We'll have to watch it for a few hours, but this is very promising-"