The Brightest Night (Origin #3) - Jennifer L. Armentrout Page 0,109

and that’s probably a little over three thousand based on when we lived there.”

“Dear God,” I gasped. “If less than fifty percent get the flu vaccine and you use those statistics, that could mean at least fifteen hundred of them will die or mutate.”

Daemon said something, but I wasn’t tracking. A steady stream of faces flashed before me, some of them I knew, others nameless, and then that stream turned into a river of faceless people, all of them innocent. Nausea twisted up my insides.

“And let me guess, the Luxen are being blamed and the public is buying it hook, line, and sinker?”

“Yep,” Daemon clipped out.

“We have to do something,” I said, heart thumping.

“There’s nothing we can do.” Luc faced me.

“There has to be something.” My thoughts raced for an answer, settling on the one thing Mom had always stressed. “Flu shots. Dee could get a message out there to make sure people are getting their flu shots. It would be some protection—”

“There’s a nationwide shortage,” Daemon cut in. “A very convenient one. If people haven’t gotten their shot, they won’t get one.”

I lifted a hand, running it over my brow. “There’s got to be something else. People are going to mutate or they’re going to die.”

“Something is being done,” Luc said.

“You just said there’s nothing—”

“We can do,” he repeated. “As in you and me, and everyone in this room, including the adorable sleeping baby. We can’t fight a flu virus, Peaches. Not with our fists or the Source, unless we use the latter to firebomb the hell out of cities, and I don’t think anyone wants that.”

“I know that.”

“Dee is doing everything to get the word out there that the Luxen aren’t making humans sick,” Daemon explained. “That the flu is spreading like any other flu, through human-to-human contact. She’s not blaming the Daedalus or the government. If she went at them like that, she’d be shut out. No one would hear her. We have to hope that people are listening to her and taking the right precautions instead of buying into catchy nicknames.”

“We have to believe that,” Kat corrected. “There are a lot of humans out there that aren’t afraid of Luxen, who have to see through this BS.”

“And then what?” I asked, looking between the two of them. “What if they do listen? What if they don’t? Once the flu does its damage and kills or mutates millions, or even if there are no more outbreaks, what are we going to do?”

Neither Kat nor Daemon answered.

I sucked in a sharp breath. I knew what that meant—what it still meant even though Daemon was willing to give me another chance and even be there to help Luc stop me before things got out of hand. Neither of them trusted me, not with what they planned to do.

That still stung and it still angered me, but what crushed me was the knowledge that I had yet to give them any real reasons to trust me.

I could feel Luc’s gaze on me when he asked, “What is this catchy nickname for the flu?”

“It’s the most uninventive thing you could imagine.” Disgust dripped from Daemon’s tone. “They’re calling it ET.”

21

Three days after learning the flu with the stupidest nickname ever was spreading and the only thing any of us could do was hope that people would listen to Dee, I caught the stuffed banana that flew out of Zoe’s hand, winging straight for my palm instead of my face.

“Aha!” I shouted, thrusting the toy Luc had stolen from Daemon and Kat’s house into the air.

“You did it again!” Zoe clapped, a much more helpful and enthusiastic audience than Grayson.

“Congratulations,” came the gruff voice that was surprisingly more irritating than Grayson’s dry one. “You stopped a stuffed banana from physically assaulting your face.” A pregnant pause. “After twenty-three attempts.”

I counted to ten as my gaze slid past Luc’s bemused expression to the old man sitting in the folded metal chair.

Unfortunately, Zoe hadn’t come alone the last two days.

General Eaton sat there, rubbing the knee of his stiff leg. He had more comments than a sports broadcaster. When he’d showed up yesterday with Zoe, he’d claimed he’d wanted to see for himself that I was—how had he put it? “Awake and breathing and not trying to kill everyone in sight.”

Lovely.

“It was not twenty-three times,” I snapped, resisting the urge to turn the banana into a real projectile and launch it toward his head.

“It was more like fifteen,” Luc interjected.

I narrowed my eyes at