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barely feel it.
    I turn to George. “What is she talking about? What is NVX?”
    “Isn’t it obvious?” he says. “It’s an experimental nano-virus. They gave
it to her. It cured her. And now she is hooked. Now she needs regular
injections or her body will go into withdrawals. Violent withdrawals.”
    “Can they be fatal?”
    “Yes.”
    Withdrawal symptoms. Just like the Evo Agent
who shared our shipping container cell with Maria and me. I realize it’s the
same thing. I realize that Kim is experiencing what that soldier experienced
and that this whole process does not have a happy ending.
    “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” George says. “But she’s
probably not going to make it.”
    “What?”
    “Look at her. This is bad. I’ve seen this before.”
    “You’ve seen it?”
    He stops typing. “They experimented on the prisoners here. They would
give them injections. They would monitor their symptoms. They would run all
sorts of tests on them. Physical tests. Mental tests. Everything. And they
would also observe what happened when they stopped the injections. Cold turkey
so to speak.”
    “They did this here? In this prison? And you let them?”
    “Like I had a choice. I might be the warden, but this is a military
installation. I follow orders just like everybody else. When the military says
they are going to use the prisoners, their own employees, their own soldiers as
test subjects, I don’t get a say in the matter. And if I did say something, if
I showed even the slightest bit of dissent, I would not be here right now.”
    “This place is hell,” I say. “You people are sick. You make me sick.”
    “I was following orders! There was nothing I could do. It was going to
happen no matter what. And it wasn’t even a bad thing. NVX is supposed to help
people. It saved Kim’s life for crying out loud.”
    “And the side effects?” I ask, cutting him off.
    “They’re manageable. It’s no different from any other drug.”
    “No different? Have you seen the nano-virus in the real world? Have you
seen a nano-swarm?”
    George is silent. He might not have seen one, but he’s definitely heard
the horror stories.
    “Well, have you seen one?” I ask.
    “No.”
    “It’s a mechanical plague. They eat everything. And I mean everything . They are programmed to hunt
and kill. Search and destroy.”
    “It does other things,” George says. “It has to. I mean, it saved Kim.
It killed the cancer.”
    “Exactly. It killed the
cancer.”
    “Whatever. I don’t have to listen to you give me a lecture on the moral
high ground. This shit, all the stuff that happened down here, it was inevitable.
There was no stopping it. We can’t go back in time. We can’t change a thing. We
just have to suck it up and deal with it. Stop judging me. I had no say in the
matter. I’m the warden for crying out loud. I’m not a doctor. I’m not a
research scientist. I’m the guy who makes sure this place is safe and secure
for the prisoners. I make sure this place runs as smoothly as possible.”
    I am angry and I want to punch George in the face or punch the wall. I
want to hit someone or something. But I don’t say a thing and I resist the urge
to say... “Well, you did a sucky job of running this place because it’s about
as safe as a kiddie sized swimming pool full of great white sharks and it’s not
running at all.”
    But I don’t say this.
    George has a point.
    The bad men were going to do bad things no matter what. They were going
to do evil, stupid, reckless things. There is nothing we can do to change that.
    We just have to suck it up and deal with it.
    So that’s what I’m going to do.
    I am going to suck it up.
    I am going to deal with this.
    “Do you know where the sick bay is?” I ask George.
    “Yeah.”
    “Where is it?
    He shakes his head and takes a deep breath. “It’s between a rock and a
hard place.”

 

Chapter
6
    A rock and a hard place.
    Here we go.
    Time to risk my