RF Arousal Ch 18

“I’m glad you all decided to come,” Annette greets them. They’ve only seen her under stressful circumstances. She’s dressed and put together now. Her intense, distantly miserable look is still firmly in place, as though she doesn’t know how to smile. That made sense when they found her in that lab. Why’s she looking like this now? Her mess got cleaned up, and she isn’t in jail. What does she have to complain about?

“How much choice did we really have?” Riley asks. “You can fire us from FUTA. Probably get us blacklisted or something. Sue us into oblivion if we say anything.”

“There’s no threat here, Riley,” Annette says as Riley plops in a chair and folds her arms. Adella and Hana sit on either side of her as she glowers across the table at Annette.

“I want my money in a briefcase like in the movies,” Hana says.

“I want mine in a sack with a dollar sign on it,” Riley adds.

Adella smiles. “I want it straight to my brokerage account.”

Annette looks slightly taken aback. “I’m not here to offer you that. I mean, I guess if that’s what you want, I’ll try to pay. I wouldn’t think of it as a payoff. You helped me. You probably saved my life and helped me contain the situation. I guess I’d call it payment for services. But I want to tell you what’s going on. Because you called the authorities, the federal government knows about the F-virus.”

Riley perks up. “So you’re going to jail?”

Annette looks startled. “What? No. I’m going back to work. Riley, I can say in all humility that the commercial potential of my work is astronomical. You’ve seen how the promise of one advance can lift the whole stock market? You can’t put a price tag on that, and this administration needs it. They’d put me in jail if I stopped working. But my work is dangerous, and the circle of people who can understand its true nature has to be kept small, otherwise we’re going to have people trying to weaponize it. You guys know too much, but I don’t want to silence you. I want to offer you a job.”

“I’m not a scientist,” Riley says bluntly.

“Neither am I,” Adella agrees.

Riley can’t help but laugh. “I mean, we kick a ball for a living.”

“I don’t need scientists. The reason the virus got out in Florida is because someone interfered with my security. An outsider, not one of my people. I think it was Dr. Victoria Gideon, and she has ties to Umbrella. Umbrella is where my—well, she used to be my friend, Alexia Ashford is. There’s more to this than you realize. I think I know what’s going on, but it has to be investigated, and my work has to be protected. I need security.”

“We’re soccer players,” Riley repeats.

“Footballers,” Hana and Adella correct her.

“And you know about the F-virus, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that you were exposed to it, and that fact is on the record. Your blood is important now. I can’t promise that Umbrella won’t come looking for you. I think if you’re trained and working closely with me, you’ll be in less danger and more able to protect yourselves,” Annette says.

Riley thinks hard to untangle that. She sort of gets it.

“Why would we protect you?” she demands.

Annette takes off her glasses and wipes them on her sweater. “Because I’m not going to do any work on the F-virus until I know that I haven’t just created a huge biohazard. My mission isn’t research right now, Riley. It’s containment. Even if you don’t like me, I thought you might be onboard with that.”

“You want us to change careers?” Hana asks. “You want us to learn to be what, exactly? Bodyguards?”

Annette looks annoyed. “What do you think is going to happen when people find out that the F-virus exists and that your bodies might contain traces of it? Do you really just want to be kicking a ball and hoping for the best when that day comes?”

When she puts it like that…

Riley scowls. “This isn’t making me like you.”

“I don’t need you to like me. I need you to help me. You might need my help too; the lab was destroyed, and I can’t recreate the serum that I made up on the spot, but I’ll need to monitor you. You should be inoculated, and I suspect that inoculating agent will be present in your ejaculate now…” She trails off as she sees their eyes begin to glaze. “Bottom line, I need to make sure that what I gave you isn’t going to hurt you, and I don’t want you getting kidnapped by Umbrella. I’m trying to do the right thing. I always was. The F-virus can be a medical miracle that can enrich millions of lives. It’s not there yet, and I can’t get it there on my own. I’ve hired a security consultant. You’d be working with her, not me. Think about it.”