Goldilocks Forever

Chapter 14

Walton, New York

February 2043

Beau stood and unclenched his fingers. He rolled his head back and forth over his shoulders.

Toby watched him. "What? You don't believe me?"

Beau smirked. "I've heard crazier things." He lifted his arms over his head and clasped his fingers together. "I need to get up. My foot is falling asleep." He dug around his inner coat pocket for his tablet.

"You hungry? We should eat." Toby strode into the kitchen and opened the freezer door. "Frozen pizza?"

"As long as it's not thirty years old." The screen of the tablet illuminated the time. Way past the hour when he should have taken his medication. He fished into the other coat pocket and found the plastic bottle there.

"Nope. Only a year past its expiration. It's still good."

Beau flicked open the bottle with his thumb and chucked two pills to the back of his throat.

"You want something to chase that down?"

He nodded weakly. His head still ached; his legs tingled. He stomped a foot as if to shake out the pain. "Coffee?" He had a feeling this was going to be a long night.

Toby pulled a jar from the freezer and set it on the counter. "Have at it." He pointed to a coffee maker tucked away in the corner.

Beau pulled it out and plugged it in. He swiped off layers of dust and rinsed out the pot. A clean filter lay inside. He and Alex used to make breakfast together on weekend mornings. It was always Beau's job to make Cleo her coffee.

"We dine in twenty minutes." Toby twisted a knob to set the oven timer. He poured himself another cold mug of tea. "How you feeling?"

"Eh. You?" He wasn't about to tell Toby about his myriad of symptoms and about the tingling that was turning to numbness.

 "Oh, I'm fine." He lifted his shirt to examine the unblemished skin of his belly. No scars or wounds. "I've seen injuries a lot worse than that." He chuckled.

Somehow that no longer surprised Beau. He crossed his arms over his chest. "I still don't believe this virus could exist all this time--"

"Hundreds and hundreds of years."

"--and go undetected. Some scientist somewhere has to know about it."

"There are scientists all over the world who know about it: infected scientists."

"You're saying my parents were the only non-infected people to study it."

 "As far as I know." He chugged down some tea and looked at Beau as if he were waiting.

 "What did they find out?"

Toby eyed him innocently as he clenched the mug in his hand. "About what?"

"What did they learn from the research they did on her?" He couldn't bring himself to say her name.

"We never did any research."

Beau sputtered with a rush of irritation. "What? You said before—"

"I know what I said." Toby leaned back against the counter and tapped his fingers against it. His blue eyes were wide and serious. "We never did any research. We took her sample, found some odd version of the virus, and then destroyed the sample. That was our protocol. You play with the sample once and then get rid of it. We don't leave that shit around for someone else to find. Hell no."