The Rage Colony (The Colony Book 2)

by Shanon Hunt

  She scowled at the phone as the line silenced. Did he seriously just hang up on her? He’d never done that before.

  She felt more comfortable in her bent-over position, so she carefully knelt on the ground and did some push-ups. Never waste an opportunity. Jonah had whispered those words of wisdom during a meditation circle back when they were working together with new inductees. As the inductees knelt on their bruised, tender shins, sweating and chanting to release the pain, he would walk behind them, pressing down on their shoulders for a little extra challenge, holding a deep squat. Pain for them, pain for me.

  Satisfied, she returned to bed and picked up the chant again until she finally drifted into a restless nap, dreaming of death and crime and the horrible destruction and devastation outside of her safe, strong Colony walls.

  8

  October 2022, Texas

  “Another drink, sir?”

  James dropped his phone into his suit jacket pocket. Bullet dodged, but he made a mental note to reprimand Dr. Farid. Allowing Layla to read her chart … how could she be so careless? Dr. Farid had been explicitly briefed on what Layla should and shouldn’t know about her pregnancy.

  He refolded his newspaper to another page and smiled up at the first-class lounge attendant. “Please.”

  “My apologies, sir, we’ve run out of Talisker. Would you like something else?”

  “Yes, how about something from the Scotch Highlands?” James offered a friendly smile. He certainly could have just asked for a Glenmorangie, the only Highlands Scotch that the Houston airport stocked, but he liked to give people an opportunity to learn something. To better themselves. The world was bad enough without adding indolent stupidity to it.

  He pulled his phone back out from his pocket to see who was buzzing him and accepted the call.

  “Sir, my operatives have informed me that the reporter Nicholas Slater has been loitering around the Vitapura Wellness Center again.”

  James exhaled a long, slow breath. Despite the influence his team wielded on the local media, Slater couldn’t be dissuaded from what he thought was the story of a lifetime. He was like a pesky mosquito. They’d swat him away, he’d fly off for a few minutes, and then back he’d come.

  “Shall we eliminate him?”

  Oh, for god’s sake. When you were a hammer, the whole world was a nail. James rolled his eyes. “We don’t need that kind of exposure. Nick Slater is of no consequence to us. Give him enough of a scare to shut him up. Get the local authorities involved.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  James hung up the phone as the attendant set down a glass and hurried away. The fact that she hadn’t waited around for a nod of approval meant she’d failed. A quick Google search on her ever-important phone would’ve given her the answer. He took a sip to confirm his grim surmise and wrinkled his nose. American single malt. Not even a Scotch whiskey.

  It was the little things like this that reminded him why he was so dedicated to his work. The human race was truly deteriorating, not only in numbers, sadly, but in fitness—and not just physical fitness, although certainly obesity and lifestyle diseases were growing at an alarming rate, but intellectual fitness. No one exercised their minds anymore. They just shoveled in mental junk food all day long.

  He tossed his newspaper aside and turned his attention to his upcoming meeting. Something had been nagging at him. This summit would provide an important update, and the teams were excited. The scientific rationale was clear and well-vetted across his staff, and the genetic analyses were conclusive. But even so, no one in the research or clinical program could explain to his satisfaction the broad phenotypic variation across the subjects. Until it was crystal clear, the program wouldn’t be ready for prime time, and he knew the council members were anxious. They were looking for quick, early validation so they could move straight into feasibility testing.

  Each of his eight sites would be represented by two delegates, a clinical leader and a site leader. The clinical leaders were not a risk. They’d been trained since medical school to keep their opinions and theses within the small group until the supportive data were available. They did not run around spewing hypotheticals.

  The site leaders, however, would be more difficult to constrain. They were competitive, and each site wanted to be viewed as more productive, more advanced, and certainly more deserving of a larger slice of the budgetary pie. They were far more likely to exaggerate successes and downplay the side effects as unexpected outliers. Moral obligation wouldn’t be enough to keep these leaders tight-lipped; he’d need to appeal to their self-interest. They’d need to believe that sidelining with members of the council, trying to bypass him, would be detrimental to their careers. He’d have to ensure they realized that they were all in this together. No one could be the lone hero.

  The attendant returned, sliding his drink check across his lounge table. “Sir, your flight to Kauai is boarding.”

  His eyes flashed to the tattoo on her forearm. “Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno. Do you know what that means?” He reached into his jacket pocket for his wallet and held out a credit card.

  “Huh-uh. I don’t speak Spanish.”

  “It’s Latin, just like the words inked on your arm.”

  It was clear from the blank look on her face that she didn’t realize carpe diem was Latin.

  “It means one for all, all for one.”

  Finally, a light went on behind her eyes. “Oh, yeah! Like the three musketeers!” He was momentarily impressed that she’d read the book, before she continued, “Yeah, we had to watch that movie in English class when I was in, like, eighth grade.” She handed him a receipt and switched back into mindless robot mode. “Sir, have a great flight.”

  One for all and all for one. If he accomplished nothing else over the next two days, it would be that. No one could take their data and go rogue. The new model wasn’t ready for field testing; it wasn’t even ready for expanded Colony testing. He couldn’t risk someone getting Stewart all worked up. Stewart Hammond was way too emotionally driven, with the patience of a toddler.

  He tucked his wallet back into his jacket and studied the departures board, threw his leather satchel over his shoulder, and clutched his rolling carry-on. If he got so much as a sniff that anyone on his team was less than fully committed to the agreed-upon next steps, they’d be removed and replaced.

  He redialed the last incoming number as he walked toward the gate.

  “Sir.”

  “I’d like you to send an operative to Kauai. I may need your help in facilitating some personnel changes. Just a backup.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll have him on the next flight out.”

  Qui totum vult totum perdit. He who wants everything loses everything.

  9

  March 2024, Arizona

  Nick leaned his Diamondback mountain bike against the wall, tossed his helmet onto the futon next to his open laptop, and flipped on the oscillating floor fan to cool down the million-degree apartment. It was hotter than a stripper on a searchlight, as Uncle Jay would say. He grabbed a tinfoil-covered piece of cardboard cut to the size of his single west-facing window, the poor man’s blackout blinds, set it on the windowsill, and turned on the floor lamp.

  The Harris case had been eating at him all day. He pulled a bottle of Cuervo from the minifridge and knocked back a shot without bothering with salt or lime. He sipped the second shot slowly, willing his mind to clear as he appraised his wall.

  The floor-to-ceiling mind map was his masterpiece, an intricate spiderweb of three-by-five notecards, newspaper articles, and photos of government officials who’d been involved in the aftermath of the virus. The center of the web was a poster-size blowup of the still image that had accompanied the youtube audio clip that became known as “A Desperate Warning to the World.” The warning had gone out on every social media platform. It had played on every news station for weeks and been translated into every language. The unidentified source—Nick was certain it was a US government off
icial, a whistleblower—spoke for less than two minutes: 272 words, the exact length of the Gettysburg Address.

  Of course, no one remembered Lincoln’s beloved words or his inspirational message anymore. The pipe dream of human equality had long since faded.

  But Nick was far less interested in the speech than the image. While most people focused on the shocking carnage on the cement in front of the restaurant, Nick’s eye had been drawn to a long crack down one of the pillars beneath the restaurant’s slightly lopsided red awning. It had an uncanny similarity to the crack in the Liberty Bell.

  Next to that photo was another, taken when the military swept through the small town of Jiuquan to clean up. It was featured all over the world with the headline “Ground Zero Is Virus-Free.” The two photos appeared identical, except the Chinese military’s image of the restaurant didn’t show a crack in the pillar.

  It could be a goddamn hair on the camera lens! the chief screamed when Nick showed him both images. But there were other small discrepancies, like the crooked canopy. To Nick, it looked like a cover-up. And sure, he was suspicious and untrusting; that’s what made him a great investigative journalist. Until two days ago, anyway.

  But why had no one else questioned the crack?

  He poured one more shot of tequila and turned his attention to his more urgent obsession. Hanging from the opposite wall was a map of the Vitapura Wellness Center in Black Canyon City, hand-drawn and rendered on his computer and printed on a five-by-six-foot sheet of paper. Its underground maze of empty corridors and rooms beneath the employee housing section was nearly the size of the main facility, yet Vitapura had denied using the underground sections for anything other than storage. It didn’t make any sense. The layout was too elaborately designed and constructed to be a storage facility. It had to have cost a fortune.

  It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize they had to have been hiding something, yet no investigation ensued. There was no crime in building an underground compound or even lying about how it was used, but Nick had spent hours exploring the maze, looking for evidence of misconduct. The printout was covered in notes and findings, but maddeningly, nothing insightful.

  He lifted his eyes to another image, a satellite view of the grounds. In red ink, he’d drawn a bull’s-eye where Austin Harris’s remains had been found. In blue, he’d marked the seven spots where he’d set up hidden cameras a few days ago, just before publishing the folo.

  Four long days had passed since the article went live, and he was getting nervous. Maybe they had nothing more to hide. More likely, they had insider knowledge that the investigation wouldn’t be reopened. But he planned to give it a full week before giving up.

  He powered up the monitors on his desk and opened the camera viewer program. Seven squares appeared onscreen. He selected View Motion Detection and clicked past various jackrabbits and a single coyote.

  And then he was delivered a gift from the gods.

  His stomach flip-flopped as he watched an unmarked white van pull up to the locked service gate. The driver stepped out of the van, swinging a small duffle bag. Nick paused the video and zoomed in, trying to get a good look at the man’s face. It was too grainy for any detail.

  He copied and pasted the image into Photoshop and opened the noise reducer. The image cleared up enough to show a clean-cut Latino man, possibly Indian, wearing a collared shirt and black slacks. He looked too polished to be from the dregs.

  Nick distractedly slapped the print button and continued the video.

  The guy surveyed the area before creeping along the cement wall away from the camera until he was out of sight. Twenty-two minutes passed before he returned from the same direction. He circled to the shade on the passenger side, blocked from Nick’s view, and remained there for four minutes and twenty seconds. Had he been waiting for someone? He must have given up, because he climbed back into the van and left the scene.

  The van wasn’t close enough to the Harris gravesite for him to have been paying respects. Nick scrolled back and zoomed in to inspect the van. Mercedes. Too posh for a cargo truck. In fact, by the looks of the super-high roof, it appeared to be a passenger van without windows. He zoomed more until he could make out the van’s license plate. Bingo.

  He picked up his phone and noticed a text from Darcy. Anything from cameras yet?

  He replied, Maybe. Call you later. Then he scrolled through his contacts and dialed.

  He didn’t bother with small talk when Max answered. “Hey man, I need a favor.”

  “Slater. What’s up?” Max had been his best source at Motor Vehicles for years, ever since they’d worked together to expose an elaborate criminal ring of luxury car thieves. That and the fact that Nick had introduced him to his future wife.

  “Can you run a plate for me?”

  “Shoot.”

  Nick read the license plate number.

  “That’s an exempt plate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re like diplomat plates. Any plate starting with DC means it’s a federal vehicle, with plates issued out of Washington, DC. Specifics aren’t given to state motor vehicle departments, but it does say it’s registered by a company called EGNX.”

  “EGNX? That’s it? Just the acronym?” Nick put the phone on speaker and grabbed his laptop. The only thing that came up for EGNX was an airport in the UK.

  “Is there a name associated with it? Like the person who registered the vehicle?”

  “Nah, that’s it.”

  “Dammit.” Despite all the connections he’d built over the years, he had no one in DC. “Hey, thanks a lot, man. We’ll catch up soon. Say hi to the missus.”

  “Will do.”

  He hung up and stared at the white van frozen on his screen. “So, my great and worthy opponent, we finally meet after all these years. What were you doing out there, EGNX?”

  There was only one way to find out.

  He dropped his laptop into his backpack, grabbed his car keys off the table, and scooted out the door.

  10

  October 2022, Mexico

  “Okay, so the next delivery of recruits will be on Sunday.” Layla scrolled through her notes from the last recruiting team meeting, her tablet comfortably atop her round belly as she sat propped up by pillows in bed. “And it looks like they’re coming from region four.”

  “Which is?” Mia sat cross-legged in the leather chair next to the bed, her laptop opened across her ankles. She never took her eyes off the screen as she scooped hummus onto the end of her carrot stick and shoved the whole thing in her mouth with a crunch. Somehow even when she ate like a pig, Mia was adorable.

  Layla couldn’t help being jealous of Mia’s trim figure and flexibility. Mia was thirty-eight, one of the original founding members of the Colony with James, but she didn’t look a day over twenty-five. Perhaps it was because she was pure. She’d been given the pain elixir, and she could feel nothing. It’s a blessing and a curse, she’d once said, as she showed Layla the grotesquely scarred back of her calf. She’d accidentally rolled onto a smoldering log at an inductee campfire ritual and hadn’t noticed until someone asked who was cooking meat.

  Layla snapped back to the moment. “Region four is Florida and the southeastern states, so mostly prescription painkiller addicts—Oxy, Fentanyl, Vicodin. Probably not many meth addicts. So look for the usual signs of withdrawal. You know: agitation, sweating, that kind of thing. If they aren’t showing any signs, they might be too far gone.”

  The fetus was rammed up against her diaphragm again, and she reached for the handheld toggle switch next to her pillow. Thank god for the invention of the adjustable bed. Housekeeping had been kind enough to set up a hospital bed in the living room so she could have a bit more open space and natural light during her long bedbound days. This was only the second day, and already the hours were crawling. She had no idea how she was going to survive the rest of this pregnancy.

  Mia flipped her long dreads behind her shoulder
and continued typing frantically, two hummusy fingers quarantined above the keys.

  “At this stage,” Layla added, “we’re only looking for remorse and hope. We won’t look at submissive tendencies until later in the process.”

  “What about spiritual mindset?” Mia asked.

  “That all goes to stage two. We push hard on psych testing in early induction so that we can fast-track the hi-pos early.”

  Mia raised her perfectly tweezed eyebrows. “Hi-pos?”

  “The high-potentials. They’re identified during the first few weeks and separated from the main induction group.”

  So much had changed since Layla had begun running the purification program, not only in terms of the numbers and quality of recruits but in how they were inducted and readied for purification. The antiquated induction process James and Mia had designed years ago was a shadow of the new factory-style system. Layla’s production system churned out pures fast enough to keep pace with the voracious appetite of the research program. It was no wonder that Mia looked overwhelmed.

  Layla idly rubbed her belly. Maybe she should ease up a bit. “Hey, listen, Mia, why don’t you send Isaac back for another week? He’s been involved long enough to get through the next round. Michael can help with the interviews.”

  “No, no, it’s okay. I can handle it.”

  “Seriously. He’s—”

  “Hm-mm. Isaac’s been reassigned.”

  Wow, that was fast. She hoped he wasn’t stuck somewhere mundane like facilities management. Despite her criticism of his recruiting tactics, he was smart and deserved an important role. “That’s great! Where is he?”

  “He’s, uh…” Mia looked at her lap. “He’s been assigned to a GS-5 program.”

  Layla felt a flush crawl up her face. “A GS-5? What’s the gig?”

  “You know I can’t say.” Mia still didn’t meet her gaze.