Read Online The Dark Water by Seth Fishman - Free Book Online

telling them where we are.”
    â€œBut we’ll be on the monitors.”
    Odessa shrugs, a barely noticeable gesture in the suit. “If I were Veronica and Sutton was trying to get in, the last thing I’d do is keep the monitor focused on places I didn’t want him to see.”
    â€œBut we don’t know that!” Jimmy says.
    â€œWhat do we know?” she asks. “We know she sent us here. We know to put on these suits. And we know that she mentioned monkeys. So let’s go with what we know, okay?”
    Jimmy takes a few breaths to calm down. The suit isn’t helping. But Odessa’s right. He glances up at a camera along the wall, then jumps and knocks it to the right. He smiles at her, proud of himself, and she smiles back, which is all the reason he needs to keep going.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    They leave the door open and quickly discover that this part of the lab is better equipped. Bigger rooms, crazier machines. Electron microscopes are nothing when compared to the MRI room. Mr. Kish wasn’t joking; the Westbrook alums
funded
this place. It’s better than a hospital. They open doors and check out each room, not sure what they’ll find or where they’ll find it.
    At the far end of the hallway, past a number of small white rooms, some with dentist-style chairs, others with silver tables, and one with a colorful carpet and kid’s toys, there’s a thick, heavy-set door. A crosshatched window is fixed three-quarters of the way up, and through that Jimmy can see more cages, bigger ones. Small hands poke through the cages and hold on to the bars.
    â€œThis must be it,” he says to Odessa.
    â€œNow what?” she replies.
    â€œI have no idea. That’s what Veronica’s for.”
    â€œSo, are the monkeys, like, really sick or something? Is that why we have to wear these suits? Are we supposed to hope they find and bite and infect Sutton and his men?”
    Jimmy cranes his neck, trying to see more of the monkeys. He realizes that he doesn’t recognize the type, that aside from apes like chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, and monkeys like um, baboons, he’s pretty clueless.
    â€œDess,” he says, trying to work out the logic while he speaks, “if these monkeys are testing water that’s supposed to stop killer viruses, then it makes sense that they would have killer viruses here too, right? Like Ebola and Marburg. Maybe they have
the
virus somewhere in here, the one that made us like this . . .”
    â€œYeah,” she replies, opening the door, apparently ready to get this over with. “But this is minimum security. I bet these ones are safe and the infected ones are past the door marked with the big four.”
    â€œThen what are we supposed to do with them?”
    â€œJust trust Veronica, okay?” Odessa replies, looking over her shoulder. “She got us this far.”
    Jimmy clamps up, annoyed. He’s never liked following orders.
    Inside, the room’s bright and the noise is loud. The monkeys, agitated, move back and forth in their cages, which are bigger than he thought—they’re set back into the wall a good ten feet. They’re smaller than chimps, but still a decent size. Long hair on the head and neck, a light brown that turns gray as it moves down the body and toward the belly. Several of them are screaming, baring their teeth. A few of the bigger ones stare, wide-eyed, mouths open. Like angry stoners.
    â€œThis is intense,” Odessa says, looking at the cages.
    Jimmy thinks that’s code for her not wanting to be here. He’s always been good at reading Odessa. “Why don’t you go back out into the hallway and close all the doors down the corridor? We don’t want the monkeys getting lost. Go ahead of me and make sure their path is going to be straight, cool?”
    â€œI can do that,” she says, grateful.
    â€œBut remember,” he