St. Devon’s Academy looked more like a maximum-security prison facility than a private school. Its sleek modern buildings sat behind tall concrete walls that had barbed wire installed along the tops. Almost all schools these days had fences or walls, but this was the first one she’d seen that had its own guard tower. Seeing a guy armed with a high-powered rifle and a scope looming above a bunch of little kids kicking around a soccer ball or just hanging out, acting like this was all normal, made her heart sink.
When it came to carriers, the police were subject to the same checks as ordinary citizens. Ellie and Danny had to wait several minutes while two men armed with assault rifles checked and rechecked their IDs. Forms were signed, fingerprints scanned, and after the gate was unlocked, Danny pulled up against the curb of what appeared to be the main building. Another pair of armed men guarded the door. Others were stationed at various checkpoints and roamed the perimeter and parking lot.
Vanilla Pudding pulled up behind them. Ellie got out and again asked the boy if he felt safe. He assured her that he did, and off he went to the front door to submit his hand to the portable fingerprint scanner one of the guards was holding.
“You happy with your job?” Vanilla Pudding asked.
“Is anyone?”
Vanilla Pudding smiled. He had tiny, baby teeth. “Reason I’m asking is, my company has a lot of clients who are young girls. They’d feel more comfortable in the presence of a woman.” He reached into his coat and came back with a business card. “If you want to make some real money, with real health benefits, call me.”
Ellie thanked him, handed him back his documentation and weapons, and headed back to the patrol car.
“Your stop-and-frisk routine back at the house,” Danny said as they drove away. “You mind telling me what that was about?”
Ellie shrugged. “We saw something, so we stopped.”
“We?”
“The kid looked scared shitless, so I decided to check it out.”
Danny’s gaze cut to her; he wanted, she knew, to call bullshit. And he’d have been right, of course.
Ellie had been a patrolwoman for a little over a year, but her real goal—her future—lay in the LAPD’s newly formed Blood Crimes Unit. Admittance was extremely competitive—only the best and brightest. She considered herself reasonably intelligent, knew she was a hard worker, and, for the most part, had good people skills. What she had going against her was lack of investigative experience—and BCU looked for two years minimum, even for lowly data analyst positions.
The way she figured it, the more information she could collect on the blood world during her stop-and-frisk routines, as Danny called them, the more knowledge she would accumulate, and the more attractive she’d look when she reapplied to the BCU.
There was another, more personal reason she didn’t want to get into it with Danny—with anyone.
Ellie was about to change the subject when Danny, thankfully, did it for her. “You ever wonder what it’s like?” he asked.
“Being a carrier?”
“Getting an infusion.”
Ellie shrugged. “Don’t really see the point.”
“You can say that ’cause you’re young and good-looking. How old are you, again? Twenty-four?”
“Twenty-six, which is a whole two decades younger than you, Gramps.”
“Yeah, wait until you hit middle age. Your body starts changing without your permission. Everything begins to wrinkle and sag, and everything hurts. It’s depressing as hell.” Danny sighed. “You do know this is one massive government conspiracy, right?”
Ellie drew a slow, deep breath through her nose as she shifted in her seat.
“No,” he said. “No, don’t give me that look. I’m not some conspiracy nut. Carrier blood is a real thing. It’s a fact. It’s got that circulating protein there, that enzyme called eNAMPT that makes cells produce these unbelievable amounts of energy, which is why carriers look like they don’t age, why they seem to be able to fight off disease. I mean, that’s a legitimate medical thing, right?”
Ellie sighed. “Yes.”
“Okay, and we also know a full-body transfusion of carrier blood alone doesn’t erase wrinkles and burn belly fat and increase muscle tone and all that other wonderful stuff—which is why, back in the day, scientists and biohackers started experimenting with carrier blood mixed with other medications. They found one that worked, that chemo pill that’s now off the market because it’s supposedly carcinogenic, Vira-something.”
“Viramab.”
Danny snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. So, all these megawealthy one-percenter types start flocking to these holistic centers that are springing up like warts all over the East and West coasts, and they’re paying mucho dinero to get these carrier transfusions mixed with Viramab, and, voilà, the shit actually works.”
Everything Danny had said so far was 100 percent true. Now here comes the crazy curveball.
“This goes on for about a year,” Danny said, “and then suddenly the government shuts everything down because people getting these transfusions allegedly die from them.”
“Allegedly?” Ellie chuckled, saw that he was dead serious. “Danny, people actually died. They were on the front pages of major news sites. Their immune systems eventually broke down—”
“That’s what the government wants you to believe.”
“You’re saying that all those well-known actors and actresses and titans of industry and rich folks from all over the world who died from these blood transfusions were targeted by the CIA or some such bullshit? Please don’t tell me you believe that.”
“I’m talking about the Illuminati.”
“Okay, we’re done here.”
“You read that article last week in the Times, the one about Senator Baker from Ohio? Guy was showing early signs of dementia, right? People were urging him to retire. Now the dementia’s gone—”
“According to an anonymous source,” Ellie said. “There’s no direct proof—”
“Oh, please. Pull up the side-by-side pictures. There’s no doubt he’s using carrier blood. And that’s my point. Wealthy people, people in power—you know they’re getting carrier blood from someone who has perfected the recipe. Could be an underground supplier, could be big pharma. Who knows? Point I’m trying to make here is that the law and rules of society only apply to common folk like you and me. The wealthy and the elite—these are the people who can get their hands on this stuff. These are the people who will continue to live and reproduce, and in time they’ll create a new world order.”