12.

As we moved through damp alleyways and crisscrossed city blocks, I was surprised by the familiar surroundings interrupted occasionally by tall, undulating towers plated in translucent solar panels.

“Are we in Harlem?”

“Yes, we are,” Alex answered while looking nervously behind us.

“I can still recognize the place. I used to come here a lot on business. Where are we going?”

“My apartment.”

“You think it’s safe?”

“Better than staying out on the street dressed like this. We need to get you in some normal clothes. Plus, it’ll take them a while to piece together that we aren’t in the building. I know some other places we can go later on.”

“Where is your place?”

“Couple more blocks. It’s over on a Hundred and Twenty-seventh.”

The streets were bustling with late-morning traffic. As we waited to cross One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street, I watched the morning commuters making their way to their destinations and began to feel as if I was in China. Everyone behind the wheel of a car was Asian.

Alex led me to the third floor of an ancient brownstone with cracked walls and a weathered, dilapidated front door. Alex’s apartment was a reflection of himself. It was uncomplicated, carefully organized, and sparsely decorated.

I leaned against the back of a sagging maroon couch.

“How’d you know they were going to seal off the building like that?”

“Oh. I’ve seen that happen a thousand times.”

I gulped. I read too many comic books as a kid, and my mind flooded with horrific images of futuristic societies where all hell has broken loose.

“Really? A thousand times before? People attacking each other and all that?”

“For heaven’s sake, no. I’ve never seen anything like that. I meant the quarantine. The government is always putting up quarantines—buildings, city blocks, even entire cities at times. A lot of the warfare these days is biological. You have two sides that want each other’s territory and, by and large, they want it intact. Especially here. The Chinese government has weaved their operations into the city. They keep us Americans living here working for them, which keeps the US military from destroying the city. I don’t know if they’d be willing to take out New York anyway, but at some point I’d bet they would do it if it would help them to get the country back. With a couple million civilians still living here it takes wiping the city out off the table.”

“So they’ll kill us with germs instead?”

“Some of us, I suppose. They’re constantly making biological attacks against the Chinese military and government institutions. Problem is, the Chinese are really good at isolating the outbreak and treating the infected. Their medicine is so advanced that the casualties tend to be very low. Bombing has killed more civilians on this side than bio warfare.”

“That thing, you know, the,” I hissed and made claws and fangs at Alex, “that Barry, Elliott, and Janet got, was that from a biological attack?”

“No, definitely not. The doctors isolated the origin virus. It was human polyomavirus, JCV.”

“What is that?”

“We all have it, actually. Children get it from their parents. But something about the reanimation process caused the JCV to mutate radically in those three. Up until the last moment, the doctors thought they were dealing with a variola virus.”

“A what?”

“You know, like smallpox. When they were trying to make sense of Elliott, they finally realized that it wasn’t a variola after all. It was the JCV, but it had mutated so much that they hardly recognized it.”

I didn’t understand everything Alex was saying, but one thing was clear—just like the other cryonics, I had all the ingredients for the super virus. Thinking about coming down with their illness made me paranoid. I began to feel warm and clammy like I was coming down with a fever, but I chocked it up to hypochondriasis.

“So does that mean I have it?”

“I don’t know. You didn’t have the mutation in your preliminary exams, but neither did the others. It mutated so quickly. They were talking about testing you when all hell broke loose.”

“What was up with that anyway? How come the doctors thought Elliott was dead when he wasn’t?”

“He was dead.”

“He was? He didn’t look dead to me. I’d say he was pretty alive and hungry when he was having Dr. Feng for breakfast.”

“I know, I know. That’s what was so strange. In the beginning he was breathing, but his oxygen levels kept dropping as if he wasn’t. His lungs weren’t even obstructed, but he was way past the point of not getting enough oxygen to his brain. The alarm finally went off because his heart stopped, but his oxygen levels had reached zero long before that.”

“All right, so he visited the other side for a little bit. He fired back up pretty nicely after that. Same thing happens to drowning victims.”

“I wish that were it. I took a look at his vitals after he attacked that first doctor. He didn’t have a pulse. He wasn’t breathing, either.”

“Muscle spasms?” I was joking, but part of me hoped Alex would agree.

“Did Janet and Barry look like they were having spasms? Or how about Elliott when he chased Dr. Feng down the hall?”

“Is that why you were being such a coward in there?”

“I don’t know. I don’t claim to be a particularly courageous person. The whole thing got under my skin.”

“Well, if I start breaking out in sweats and sores you can just go ahead and take me out before I start biting.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t come to that,” Alex said as he walked into the other room. He stepped back into the doorway and pelted me with something. “Here, put this on.”

I held what Alex had thrown at me. It was a navy blue jumpsuit that buttoned in the front. I reluctantly removed my hospital clothes and slid on the jumpsuit. Alex returned from the bedroom wearing the same.

“Sweet, we’re twins!” I exclaimed sarcastically.

“This is standard issue for civilians. We’ll be a lot less noticeable on the streets in these.”

“Well, we’re ready to take out the trash.”

“Come on, let’s go. I know a place where they won’t be looking for us.”