The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

a minute.” Kristian fiddled with the instruments on the cart, then abruptly left the room.

Over the rush of his shallow breathing and pounding in his head, Finn strained to hear his brother’s movements.

A moment later, the sound of wheels crushing debris came from the corridor, and a gurney appeared in the entrance. Protruding from it were Cora’s worn work boots.

Finn recoiled in horror. “Kristian!” he thundered.

Heaving, Kristian pushed the stretcher into the room and swung the stretcher around, bringing her feet even with Finn’s head.

Cora’s lithe form lay motionless, her wrists and ankles strapped to the four joists. Although her khaki pants shielded her lower half, from the waist up she was bare, her history of past torture fully exposed.

“Untie her!” he said, seething. “Now!”

“Soon. How often do I get a chance to work on her like this? Thanks to whatever you said that upset her, I was able to catch her off-guard. So now I have a rare opportunity to accomplish several objectives. In addition to introducing Borrelia burgdorferi into her microbiome and collecting several liters of plasma, I can further my research on coronaviruses. That, by the way, which been limited to specimen cultures, not host animals,” he said, rolling his eyes. “I’ve decided that before infecting her with SARS-CoV, I should study the initial interaction of the virus with her cells in an isolated environment.”

“You’re crazy,” Finn said with a growl.

“Don’t worry,” Kristian replied as he retrieved an antiseptic towelette from a carton on the bottom shelf of the stand. “This won’t cause her any trauma. She’ll be asleep during the procedure.”

“What procedure?” Finn asked in a demanding tone.

“A lung biopsy. I’ll be using an aspiration needle, so the entry point will be small. See, I do care about her. And, of course, you.”

“Me?” Finn asked, jerking his arms, restrained at the wrists.

Kristian sighed with impatience. “I need a control group of typical lung cells.”

Finn’s mouth gaped open. “Why are you doing this?”

“Isn’t it obvious? The SARS virus damages the air sacs of the lungs. These samples will enable me to observe how Cora’s lung cells respond to an attack from the virus, compared to the response in typical lung cells.”

“This is wrong.”

“Let’s save the discussion on moralities until after the next novel virus emerges, and our family has stepped forward with a scalable technology that can quickly produce millions of vaccine doses,” he said, wiping clean a patch of Cora’s chest. “I’ve much to do before she wakes, including dressing your lacerations and getting you back into your suit. Then we’ll collect Lily.”

His anger surpassed the point of containment, and Finn yanked on the cords in an attempt to rip free the rails of the examining table.

“Stop that. You’ll worsen the abrasions. Those are your own fault, though I am sorry for the head injury.” Kristian discarded the towelette in a bio-hazard waste container beside the cart. “I only had enough chloroform in my bag for Cora, and I feared the window of opportunity might close while retrieving more.”

With Cora’s limp form only four feet away, Finn wasn’t worried about himself. “Does Dad know? There’s no way he’d allow this.”

“I don’t need his permission.”

“Mom will be livid.”

“At this point I’d rather have her alive and angry than dead.”

Finn couldn’t let this happen. But how could he prevent it? The slightest tug on his cords ignited the already raw skin.

His rage surged through his veins, and he released a primal, animallike yell.

“That’s very distracting,” Kristian chided. “It’s imperative that I’m able to concentrate,” he said, picking up a gleaming needle.

Moments Later

gnoring the fiery sensation of plastic digging into raw flesh, Finn battled the restraints as he screamed at Kristian.

“Shhh,” Kristian said, prodding Cora’s chest to determine his entry point between two ribs. “Ideally I’d be doing this with the aid of a CT scan.”

Finn clenched his jaw. So far, his rage had been futile. Although silence would make him feel complicit, it would be better for Kristian to quickly, cleanly complete this violation of her basic human rights.

Kristian leaned forward, and with his usual surgical precision, inserted the needle.

Finn longed to shut his eyes, but he felt a responsibility to bear witness. Such a small puncture likely wouldn’t even scab over, leaving no physical proof.

Deftly, Kristian withdrew the needle, just as the exterior door groaned and light swarmed the room.

“Stop!” Rollie bellowed from the doorway.

Kristian lurched backward.

A cold draft blasted Finn. “Thank God you’re here.”

“Thank Lily, too,” he replied, glaring at Kristian. “She was worried about you, so she came to the surface, where her phone has reception.”

“But the mosquitos,” Finn exclaimed.

“I instructed her to go back down and wait for us.” Rollie bent over Finn. “What happened to your head?” He peered into Finn’s eyes. “Follow my finger.”

“Kristian hit me with a pipe,” Finn replied, tracking the motion.

“What is wrong with you?” Rollie asked Kristian as he examined the contusion on Finn’s temple.

“He’s fine. At the most, a mild concussion.” Kristian responded. His hands remained tucked behind his thighs, and Finn realized he was hiding the aspiration needle, now filled with Cora’s lung cells.

“The same cannot be said for her.” Finn jerked his chin toward Cora.

Rollie shook his head in clear disgust as he rifled through his bag and pulled out a can of insect repellent. “You know her strain of RVF is lethal,” he said to Kristian as he sprayed Finn. “It’s sheer luck that none of the vandals who’ve come here during the summer have caused an outbreak.”

“The first thing I did was spray him.”

Coughing from the chemical mist, Finn glowered at his brother. He didn’t attempt to speak; the next statement he planned to make would be in the form of a fist to Kristian’s face.

Shaking his head, Rollie moved to inspect Cora. After checking for breathing, he visually examined her bare chest, narrowing in on the patch of skin still slick from the surgical wipe. “I’m appalled. After we thoroughly discussed this, you still . . .” He grunted—an obvious