The trick to taking a beating is to lean into the punches. The two Fireflies holding Joel clearly want to shove him back against the corrugated metal wall where he'll have fewer options to fight back. Trouble is, that would double the force of the punches their buddy is landing into Joel's ribs and gut. So, Joel doesn't overtly struggle against the hands holding his shoulders, but he does half-foil them with little lunges forward in time with the blows, so that he can give with the hits and not bruise his back as bad as his front.
They're getting tired - these three boys manning the old storage room-turned-prison. They started in on him as soon as they'd gotten him in here and stripped him of his weapons. Well, most of his weapons. They missed the shiv tucked into the lining of his jacket. He doesn't reach for it, though, because he knows the difference between a retributive asskicking and actual attempted murder, and this is clearly the former. Besides, they haven't cracked anything yet, and Joel doubts they can keep this up much longer. They've been skipping PT, clearly.
Across the room, a door creaks open and a voice cries out with rehearsed outrage. "Hey, cut that out! We're not barbarians."
These boys won't be winning any Oscars. They don't even feign surprise. Choreographed as a musical number, the two holding him shove him to the ground and all three file out the door. Joel pushes himself up to sit, panting but refusing to give Anderson more of a response than that. All the blows landed on his ribs and gut where they could be concealed; the Fireflies were careful not to touch his face.
Jerry's face, on the other hand, is already a mess of purple and red. A spectacular bruise is blooming over his cheekbone and his nose looks like an overripe strawberry. It's a messy, public kind of injury, and one that takes weeks or months to fully go away. Joel admires it for a moment.
"I'm sorry about that." Anderson jerks his head at the departed mooks. "They weren't acting on orders."
Joel hauls himself onto the thin mattress on the floor and wraps one arm around his knees. The other is still shielding his side. "Yeah. I bet."
"Are you injured?"
"What do you think?"
"Your ribs . . . can you breathe okay?"
"Can you?"
Thwarted of the chance to playact benevolence, Jerry narrows his eyes and grits his teeth. "What the hell were you doing back there?"
"Thought I was pretty clear with my complaints."
"Look, if you've got an issue with my studies, you bring that to me. Privately. You don't throw a tantrum in front of half my command structure."
"Bring it to you privately, huh? So you can hush it up privately? No thanks. You made her lie for you."
"Because I knew you'd be unreasonable, and frankly I don't have a free week to fill you in on the science."
"Oh, fuck your science. You were over the line, and you know it.
Anderson's face hardens. "I don't think you get how this works."
"I've got some notion."
The doctor approaches him and drops into a crouch, within striking distance. "I have a pandemic to stop - one that has pushed us to the brink of extinction. Nothing is more important. We're talking fate of the world. What's one little girl compared to that?"
Joel grabs him by the collar and hauls him close. "What the fuck are you saying?"
Anderson doesn't flinch. "We need Ellie. We need her alive. We don't need you." He pauses. "But, she does."
Joel shoves him away. "You think I'm scared of your threats?"
"Of course not. Why should you care if you die? You haven't been alive in years. That little girl, though . . . she'd care, wouldn't she? And, yeah, she's a strong kid, but do you think she's strong enough to go through this on her own?" Joel opens his mouth to snap back, but Jerry cuts him off. "Think about it, Joel. Because that's what you're risking when you fly off at the handle like this. Whether we end up having to kill you or just kick you out of Utah, the result for Ellie will be the same. You'll be gone, and she will never find out what happened to you." He stands. "I'll give you three days to think about it. Maybe decide which side you want to end up on." He pauses by the door, his back to the room. "We don't have to be your enemy, Joel."
Joel doesn't dignify that with a response.
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After three days of sleeping on a two-inch mattress and pissing in a bedpan, Joel is released on his own recognizance. His first stop is the showers. The guards left him alone after that first day - they're not barbarians. Still, his chest and abdomen are a mess of purple, which earns him a few looks in the communal showers. As soon as he's washed the grunge out, he pulls on a tee shirt and thick flannel, his expression daring anyone to say something.
His next stop is Ellie's room. It's mid-morning and he's way outside of his usual evening visiting hours, but the guards wave him through without question.
He finds her sitting at her desk with a massive tray of food in front of her. She glares up at him. "Happy now, asshole?"
Something unclenches in his chest. His lip quirks. "A little." He steps close and stares down at a towering pile of what looks remarkably like tater tots. He plucks one from the top, dunks it in ketchup, and pops it in his mouth. Yep, tastes like tater tots, too. "I didn't know they still made these."
"Yeah, yeah, it's a fucking modern miracle." Her eyes narrow. "You broke Dr. Anderson's face."
"Yeah. And?"
"And?! You don't think that qualifies as freaking out? Which I specifically begged you not to do?"
"I wasn't 'freaking out.' I had a point to make, and I made it."
"And fuck any nasal septum that gets in the way, right?"
Joel spits her with a look. "He was over the line. He knows that now, even if you don't."
"Jesus, Joel, you're fucking hopeless, you know that?" Her small fist swings out, oozing annoyance. Unfortunately, it catches him right in the rib that came the closest to cracking, and a small oof of pain escapes him before he can smother it. Her eyes widen. "What?"
"Nothing," Joel says.
"Oh, yeah?" She springs at him and grabs at the bottom of his shirts, jerking them up just high enough to get an impression of bruised skin before he pulls away. "Jesus Christ." Her voice is suddenly less angry than shaken. "Anderson said he just locked you up for a couple days."
"It's the cost of doing business."
"Business? They tried to punch your spleen out and you wanna talk to me about business?"
"I expected something like this before I ever hit the doc. Honestly, they were more restrained than I thought they'd be."
Her eyes are wide and horrified, but her voice is hard. "Show me."
"Ellie . . ."
"What? You've been checking on my every boo-boo for weeks. Fucking show me."
He sighs, unbuttons his flannel, and tugs the shirt up, exposing the bruises. He half turns. "Happy now?"
Her face is bloodless. "Joel . . ."
"Hey. Settle down. It really ain't a big deal." He sighs, dropping the shirt. "Any gang out here would've done the same or worse. Now, the Fireflies might be trying to save the world, but at the end of the day, they're still a gang. They've gotta operate like one."
"Anderson said . . ."
"Okay, look at it this way. Once upon a time before the outbreak, punching some random guy like that would've landed me in jail for a month or three, so I could think about the consequences of my actions. Nobody's got time for that anymore - there's no point in locking someone up if they're just an extra mouth to feed. So, they find quicker ways of getting their point across."
"So, they fucking beat the shit out of you?"
"Oh, come on, you saying you never got your ass whooped at that school of yours?"
"Well . . . that was . . . different! That was . . . rulers and shit, not fucking bare-knuckled boxing!"
"Honestly, Ellie? I've had worse. And I'd have taken worse if that's what it took to get Anderson to back off."
She backs away and sits down hard. "You're such a fucking idiot."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah, why the fuck do you think I lied to you? Because I knew if you knew, you'd fly off, do something stupid, and get yourself hurt. And, then what happens to me, huh? Jesus, Joel, I can't do this on my own!"
There's something sharp in Joel's throat, almost cutting off his breath. He can feel the walls of a cage solidifying around him, tighter and more secure than anything the Fireflies could've built. "I know," he says quietly, "I'm not goin' anywhere."
She looks up at him. "Y'know, I actually like Anderson most of the time? He's funny if you're not constantly antagonizing him. He treats me like I'm an adult. But, he will kill you if you keep fucking with him. And I'm not okay with that."
"I know," he says again.
She sighs, and looks away. He sees the moment when something in her wavers as well. Her hands are shaking. Without warning, she stands up and throws her arms around him. Joel hugs her back and grits his teeth, making sure that no grunt or whimper escapes his lips when she collides with his battered chest. "I'm sorry," she whispers, "I shouldn't have lied." Her hands fist in his shirt. "I don't want to lose you."
Deep in his chest, he feels some part of himself breaking apart. Dying. Dissolving into dust. For once in his life, he lets it happen without a fight. "I know," he whispers, "I'm gonna stay right here."
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The north side of the wall is always the least interesting. At least on the east and south, they occasionally get target practice when some poor clicker wanders by. North side is nothing but empty streets, most of the time. Joel sits in the silly lifeguard chair, rifle over his knees, staring out into the dark. There's floodlights behind him, but nothing to see ahead, and there won't be until sunrise four hours from now.
"Joel!"
His head jerks and he sacrifices his night vision to look down. It's Jerry, standing at the base of the sandbags and staring up with a closed expression.
"They said you'd been up here for twelve hours!" He has to shout to make his voice heard over the night wind.
Joel settles his hands over the rifle. "Folks had to cover for me while I was locked up," he explains, his voice neutral, but meant to carry, "Had to pay 'em back."
"Mind if I come up?"
"It's your wall. I just live here."
He clambers up the sandbags until they're close enough to talk without raising their voices. Anderson pulls his arms around his knees as he perches on the top of the makeshift wall. Jerry's face is pensive. "I finished analyzing the data from the calorie restriction trial. You were right - it did nothing to the infection."
Joel merely grunts.
Anderson glances at him, evaluating. "I should've been a lot more honest with you from the start." He draws a slow breath. Joel gets the sense that he's being tested - that Anderson is carefully feeling out his limits. A day ago, that would've made him angry. "There've always been two theories when it comes to Ellie's immunity. Either there's something special about her immune system that lets her keep the infection in check . . . or there's some fundamental change in her infection - in the Cordyceps in her brain - that keeps it acting as a symbiote. That makes it not want to spread."
Joel stays silent. His eyes just keep scanning the darkness, mechanically.
"I was really hoping it would be her immune system. Immune responses are complicated, but we can investigate them safely. That might've let us work out a treatment based on her blood or bone marrow. But, after the calorie restriction trial . . . we're ready to move on from that theory. It weakened her immune system just a little - that was the whole point. If she was keeping the Cordyceps in check, we'd have seen a rise in her serum antigen titers. Maybe even increased fungal activity on PET scans."
Joel's hands tighten on his rifle. He greets the knowledge that Anderson intentionally set out to weaken Ellie with the same weary resignation that he has for everything he can't change.
"So, we need to change tactics and focus on the Cordyceps instead. That's . . . technically less complicated. Actually, it's totally feasible. If we can get a sample of the mutated symbiotic Cordyceps, we can test it on a live subject and see if it leads to the same kind of benign fungal growth that Ellie has. If it does, it's just a matter of harvesting enough that we can start inoculating people. Like smallpox. We could have a viable vaccine in a couple of months. Think about that, Joel. Hundreds of immune soldiers moving into the worst-hit areas to start cleaning them out. Vaccination rings around the hotspots. Whole communities not having to live in fear."
Joel is too caught up on that word "harvesting" to pay much attention to Anderson's little utopia. "So, why haven't you done it yet?" He asks finally. "You said she sheds spores in her blood. You started culturing them months ago."
"And I've done everything I can to learn from those cultures, but you can't grow Cordyceps in a lab just off of blood samples. Not even if you use a human test subject as a host. The spores are immature. They bud, and then they die without reaching their next life cycle stage. That's why she can't infect someone, even with prolonged contact. Only the adult fungus can pass the infection along." Anderson hesitates. "So, we need a sample of that."
Joel's blood freezes. "But, the only place it grows is her brain."
"Yeah. Left parietal lobe, to be precise."
His knuckles turn white. "No." The word was meant to be angry and firm, but it comes out soft. Almost pleading.
"Hey, don't panic! It's not as bad as what you're thinking."
Joel waits.
Jerry hesitates, then plunges on. "Think of it like a brain tumor. That's basically what it is, only it's fungus instead of cancer. It's pushing the healthy parts of her brain to the side, but there's enough redundant tissue that she's compensated. Brains are more resilient than people give them credit for. What we need is basically a biopsy. It's not without risk - we'd have to drill a small hole in her skull and use a needle to get a sample. But, neurosurgeons used to do more complicated procedures than that all the time without problems."
"On people who were sick," Joel says, but there's still no heat in his voice. He's trying to process and mostly failing. "They didn't do brain surgery on a healthy kid."
"Joel . . . this could be the last thing we need from her. Yes, it'll take her a couple weeks for her skull to heal. Yes, there are risks. But think about it: once we have her Cordyceps strain, there's no more need for her to be involved in the studies. She could walk out of that room in a couple weeks and go wherever she wanted. She'd have the rest of her life ahead of her, and we'd have the cure."
Joel closes his eyes. "You're not askin' for my permission. You've made it clear you don't need that."
"I'm asking you to get on board. It's a rough surgery. She'll need you."
"And you'll need her cooperation. Or, at least, you want it."
"I want you to not make this any harder on her. She doesn't need doubts and what-ifs - she needs hope. And if you can't give her that, I'm asking that you walk away now. We could get you safely out of the city. And, you know Marlene will look after her."
Joel shakes his head. He feels sick and he's more tired than he's been in his life, but at least the decisions are easy. Seeing them play out, maybe not so much. "I promised her I wasn't going anywhere. Can't go back on that now."
tbc