“Those were your antibodies that they gave me?” he asked, surprised. She nodded.

“Of course they were.” Hadley said it like he should have already known this. She opened her mouth to say more, but Maisie shot her a look and she closed it.

“Anyway, my point is, you may be helpful in developing a vaccine,” Maisie continued. “You’re the first person to receive temporary immunity. There’s a possibility that your immunity could last even longer than a few days. Maybe Lo—the medical teams—can use you to finally make some progress on a real vaccine.”

“There are people in the US working on vaccines. I’d be happy to help them.”

“Wow, you really don’t want to stay in here,” Hadley said.

“I didn’t mean—” He took a deep breath. “I don’t belong here. My family is on the other side of the wall. My parents. My sisters. All my friends. My entire life. I’m just going to never see any of them again?”

Hadley gave him a baffled look. “Isn’t your dad running on a platform that advocates for finding a vaccine and tearing down the walls in the next ten years?”

Shit.

“Do you not believe him, or is that just a load of crap?” she continued. Maisie seemed amused suddenly.

“It’s not a load of crap….” He’d never really considered whether he believed it could be done. Democrats always ran on a platform of liberating the quarantine zone. It was just a given.

He’d listened to a host of doctors and scientists on the issue, and they’d certainly been hopeful, but also cautious. There wasn’t enough funding. There wasn’t enough help from inside the zone.

It’s become a war zone in there, one had said to him. They rarely send out samples anymore. They rarely communicate with us at all, and when they do, we’re not sure if they’re even telling us the truth. It’s hard to fix a situation that we can’t even fully understand.

“I believe that he wants to,” he finally said. Maisie cocked an eyebrow. “But there are challenges. Most of all that you guys don’t communicate with us.”

Hadley and Maisie glanced at each other.

“What?” Lennon asked.

“Well, all the communication has to go through Lopez. We can’t talk to anyone out there now, even if we wanted to.”

“I know,” Lennon said. “But you have to understand, people are scared of you guys in here.”

“We understand that fine,” Maisie said with a frown.

“We can fix that, though. If I get out, then this isn’t just some terrifying place that no one’s seen. I will have been in here and come out the other side. I can tell people what you’re like. How you helped me. People won’t be as likely to—” He cut himself off abruptly.

“As likely to what?” Hadley asked.

He hesitated. Lopez had told him not to say anything, but Lopez was dead now.

He took a breath. “I just want to apologize in advance.”

“Well, that sounds bad,” Maisie said.