Pandemic (The Extinction Files Book 1)

by A. G. Riddle

  “Welcome aboard, then.”

  She spent a year after that researching the companies Rubicon was interested in. And as the months went by, a sneaking suspicion grew in her mind. At home, she began to keep separate files from the ones she turned in. She thought about her theory during every waking hour: while visiting her father at the care facility, at the gym, during flights, and in the countless hotel rooms that all ran together. In every meeting, at every company she visited, she began looking for evidence, any clue that might confirm her suspicions—or confirm that she had officially gone crazy.

  One morning, she walked into David’s office, closed the door, and prepared to tell him what she thought. In her mind, she had imagined how he might react: laughing out loud, telling her to take a day off, telling her to stop watching so much TV.

  She said the line she’d rehearsed a dozen times. “I think there’s something going on at the companies you’ve asked me to research.”

  “Like what?” His voice was even.

  “I think they’re fronts.”

  He still betrayed no emotion. Not surprise; not even interest. “Fronts for what?”

  She swallowed. “Terrorism.”

  He focused on his computer, began typing, acting as if she had told him their lunch meeting was canceled. “That’s a very serious allegation.”

  “I’m aware of that,” she said, unwavering.

  “I’m going to a meeting in Virginia tomorrow. I’ll be driving up. I’d like you to come with me. Are you free?”

  Avery stood there, confused. It was as if he hadn’t heard a word she’d said. “Yeah, I’m free—did you… hear what I just said?”

  “I did. Let’s meet here at nine. I’m sorry, Avery, I’ve got to run.”

  The next morning, they got on Highway 1 North, then I-85. At Petersburg, they took I-95 North. To Avery’s surprise, they passed right through Richmond. After the exits for Fredericksburg, David turned off and drove through the country.

  He parked in front of a large colonial-era home with a crushed stone driveway.

  Inside, he ushered her into a wood-paneled library where several corkboards were covered with names and colored strings. She knew the names. Corporations. There were photos of the companies’ officers and investors. Desmond Hughes. Conner McClain. They were all connected. These were the companies she had been investigating.

  She walked up to the montage, her mouth open. It was true. Her theory.

  “Congratulations, Avery. Rubicon has a lot of agents. You figured it out faster than anyone else.”

  She felt a moment of pride as she studied the photos and logos. “What is this?”

  “A new kind of terrorism. These people aren’t religious idealists. They’re not zealots, foaming at the mouth, waving AK-47s in the air. They’re scientists. Technologists. Rational people. Extremely intelligent. Working in the shadows, diligently, planning.”

  “Planning what?”

  “We don’t know. It’s big, Avery. Change-the-world-forever big. A device called the Looking Glass. The companies you’ve been investigating are creating the pieces—pieces that will be assembled at a later date.”

  “Like the Manhattan Project.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Technically, they’re the modern incarnation of an ancient organization called the Order of Citium.”

  David walked to the bookshelf, took down a folder, and handed it to her.

  “We know the organization was founded two thousand three hundred years ago in the Greek city of Citium by a philosopher named Zeno. History books cite him as Zeno of Citium. People came from all over the civilized world to debate with him. Those conversations grew into something more. A movement. That’s what they were back then: a group of philosophers. Thinkers.”

  “What were they thinking about?”

  “The meaning of the universe. The purpose of humanity. Why we exist.”

  “Pretty deep stuff for two thousand years ago.”

  “They were ahead of their time. They applied themselves to three disciplines: truth, ethics, and physics. And they were persecuted for their beliefs. They watched as polytheism, then monotheism, swept the world. They went underground. Stayed there. Waited for the world to catch up. It never did. Apparently, they’re tired of waiting. They’re going to do something about it.”

  “The Looking Glass.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And what is the Looking Glass?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.”

  Avery frowned. “Okay. And when we find out, what are we going to do about it? What is Rubicon Ventures, really?”

  “Rubicon Ventures is a front. One of several used by the Rubicon program. We’re a covert organization—funded by the US government. Only a few people in government even know we exist. We have one mission: stopping Citium.”

  “People in government—like… what? CIA?”

  “No, Rubicon isn’t run out of any official government organization. We don’t have ID cards with a three-letter acronym. No paper trail, no risk of leaks. But every month, seven very highly placed members of our government meet to discuss the Rubicon program. Only they know the truth of our activities. They provide funding and help when needed.”

  “So how do we stop the Citium?”

  He smiled. “That is the question. I’ll tell you the answer when you’re ready.”

  “I’m ready now.”

  “No. You’re not. Your real training begins today, Avery.”

  That training took two years. Every Thursday night, she drove up to Northern Virginia, to the colonial home in the country, where she learned things that had nothing to do with “due diligence.” She learned to fire a handgun. She had gone hunting with her father since she was old enough to walk, but she’d had no experience with military firearms. She mastered hand-to-hand fighting. Close-quarters combat was foreign to her, but she picked it up quickly. On some level, it reminded her of tennis—quick reactions, fending off attacks from opponents, moving her feet, swinging with force.

  With each passing week she grew, changed ever so slightly. Her focus became complete.

  During that time, she continued her work at Rubicon Ventures. Rubicon was making real investments in the Citium companies, hoping that access would yield more information. Each month, Avery added more data points to the corkboard. Increasingly, those points connected.

  The Citium were getting close to completing the Looking Glass.

  Finally, she and David sat down in the library and spread out the companies connected to Citium Holdings.

  “Pick,” he said.

  “Pick what?”

  “An insertion point. You’re going to infiltrate the Citium.”

  “Hughes. He’s the key.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s different from the rest,” she said.

  “How?”

  “He’s a true believer. He’s convinced that the Looking Glass will save humanity. But I don’t think he knows the truth about what they’re doing. If I can get through to him, we’ll have access to everything—and a shot at stopping them.”

  “And if you’re wrong? If he does know? He’ll kill you.”

  “I’ll take that chance.”

  “Good. In the field, you’ll have to trust your instincts. Make the right moves. Ask the right questions. Just like you have been. I won’t be around to help you. If you think Hughes is the key, then he’s the key.”

  The next day, Avery applied for a job at Phaethon Genetics, one of Icarus Capital’s portfolio companies. Her cover story was that while performing due diligence on Phaethon for her firm, she had been impressed with their product and technology. She told the interviewer that she believed in the work they were doing, and, if she was being completely honest, she thought the company would succeed and become worth a ton of money. She hoped to get in early, get stock options, and cash out when the company was acquired or went public.

 
; They hired her a few days later. She was assigned to a programming team within the IT group. She hadn’t done any coding since she’d completed her computer science major three years before, but she picked it back up quickly.

  Phaethon was growing fast. The company was collecting genomic data and performing analysis, looking for insights that would help drug companies and healthcare providers make better decisions. They were taking a Big Data approach to medicine, and using a proprietary application that analyzed the genomic data. Their datacenter was struggling to keep up with the mountains of data the company was bringing in.

  The company’s root problem, however, was communication. The business side of the organization was constantly at war with the scientists, who were at war with programmers. The scientists didn’t move fast enough for the business group, the programmers didn’t move fast enough for the scientists, and the programmers were always complaining that they needed more computing capacity to run the simulations—simulations the business group refused to move to the grid, for security purposes.

  And that created the opportunity Avery needed to move up in the organization. Her background in due diligence, in analyzing hundreds of startup companies’ science and business, had given her unique insight into problems like the ones Phaethon was facing. And with her communication skills, she quickly became the IT group’s liaison with the scientists and business side. It didn’t matter that half the programmers could code circles around her; they were a nightmare in meetings. When at last she was promoted, it was not because of the skills she had acquired in college, but rather because of what she’d learned in her time at Rubicon: how to read people, analyze a situation, and help everyone find a solution.

  And as she had hoped, her new role increasingly brought her into contact with Desmond Hughes.

  “We got closer,” Avery said over the helicopter’s comm.

  She paused. Desmond sensed that she was holding back. He wondered if Peyton was aware of it too.

  “A month ago,” Avery said, “you discovered that I was taking data off-site, leaving it at dead drops. You thought it was corporate espionage. You confronted me, and I took a chance. I told you the truth about the Rubicon program and what we believed the Citium were doing.”

  She glanced back at him. “It was news to you, Des. You had seen only pieces of the conspiracy. Two days later, you called me and told me that you had done your own investigation. You said it was true—the Citium was planning something unthinkable.”

  “The pandemic,” Desmond said.

  “I think so,” Avery replied. “You told me that the Citium had begun with good intentions, that at their core, they had been a noble organization, focused on unraveling the greatest mystery of all time, one at the heart of our existence. In recent years, however, they had lost their way. Hard-liners had taken over, changed the agenda. They believed the human race was in danger. The experiments and steps they were willing to take had become more radical. You wanted to stop it.

  “You got me reassigned to the Kentaro Maru. You said it would be the safest place—for both of us. You said if your plan failed, you would probably be taken there. I promised to help you if that happened. The next time I saw you was in that cell yesterday.”

  “So I failed,” Desmond said.

  “Maybe. I don’t think we know enough to say yet. I think your first plan was to expose the Citium and cause a public uproar, focus media and government attention on them, and collapse the organization in one move. But they must have discovered you. You have one of the pieces of the Looking Glass. You hid it, or maybe destroyed it—that’s why they were so intent on capturing you alive.”

  Desmond nodded. “Erasing my memories was a backup plan.”

  “I think so.”

  “Then it stands to reason that somewhere in my memories is the key to stopping the Citium and the pandemic.”

  “And the key to completing their work,” Avery said. “You heard the conversation on the ship, Des. They scanned your body. You’ve got a specialized implant in your brain, in the hippocampus, where memories are stored. Conner was convinced that implant could unblock memories and that you’d left a backdoor in a mobile application that would trigger the memories.”

  She glanced back at him. “In Berlin, did you find it? The application?”

  Peyton turned to him and silently mouthed, Don’t tell her. She obviously didn’t trust Avery.

  But Desmond had found Avery’s story very convincing. It explained how she had come to be a Citium employee. How she had gotten on the Kentaro Maru. Why she had rescued them.

  And yet, her story lacked something very important: it couldn’t be verified. The Rubicon program was “strictly off-the-books,” in her words. There was no doubt in his mind she was a special operative of some kind. What he didn’t know was whose side she was truly on. What if her mission was to find the application that would unlock his memories? What if her story was just that—a story?

  He made his decision.

  “Yeah, I found it.”

  She stared at him, waiting, hanging on every word.

  “In Berlin, I found some prepaid cards sewn into the label on a suit I left at a cleaner’s. The card number led to a Google Voice line. One of the voicemail greetings referenced a web address, a hidden page on the CityForge website. There was a link to download an app called CityForge Tracker. It was location-aware, but I couldn’t get it to do anything.”

  Desmond studied Avery, seeing if she bought the lie. It was a test. Revealing the Labyrinth Reality app would serve no purpose at the moment. Lying did. If she betrayed them now, they still wouldn’t find the app.

  “Good,” she said. “We’ll download it when we land, see if it works now.”

  They flew in silence after that, through the night. Below them lay a blanket of darkness: no vehicle headlights on the roads, no twinkling cities in the distance. Above, stars shone brightly, brighter than Peyton had ever seen on any deployment before.

  She couldn’t help thinking back to Desmond’s riddle about the absence of space junk. What did it mean?

  Beside her, Hannah stirred. Peyton leaned over. The young EIS agent had a fever. Was it from the gunshot wound? Peyton ran a hand over her lymph nodes. Swollen.

  Hannah let out a cough, then another. Peyton pulled her shirt up, revealing a small, faint rash on her abdomen.

  She’s infected. Peyton’s heart sank. She closed her eyes, felt them well up with tears, but she refused to let the tears break through.

  A hand on her shoulder. Desmond staring at her, his eyes saying, I will fix this. She was usually the one who fixed things like this. But she needed help now.

  From the pilot’s seat, Avery spoke over the comm.

  “Coming up on something.”

  Beyond the helicopter’s windshield, Peyton saw a sprawling city dotted with several large bonfires. At first the fires confused her; these people wouldn’t waste wood on bonfires. Firewood was too precious in this place. They weren’t connected to the grid, had no electricity—they needed firewood to cook.

  But a moment later, she understood. They were burning bodies. As they flew closer, she could see people piling them on the pyres by the dozens. No—hundreds. She felt sick.

  In the swaths of darkness between the blazes, small lights glowed, their bearers moving about like fireflies swarming the arid ground. They were dry-cell battery torches, solar lanterns, and kerosene lamps, each giving off a slightly different hue—shades of white and yellow.

  The helicopter hovered above the scene.

  “You sure about this?” Avery asked.

  “What’s our fuel status?” Desmond replied, before Peyton could respond.

  “Our fuel status is we’re out.”

  Out the side window, Peyton saw crowds starting to gather, pointing up at the helicopter. Some held rifles.

  “Find the main road and follow it north,” she said. “There’s an airstrip where it forks. The guards will be there. They’ll keep us safe.”<
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  The helicopter banked, flew low over the dirt road, and found the airstrip, where a low-rise building glowed from the power of a generator. Peyton counted that as a good sign.

  The moment they touched down, two dozen figures emerged from the building and ran toward them, rifles held at the ready.

  Avery drew her sidearm.

  Desmond saw it. “Let’s stay cool here. I’d say we’re outnumbered.”

  The men surrounded the helicopter, shouting as they closed in. Peyton scrutinized them, expected to see Kenyan army uniforms. She didn’t. They were civilians. Dressed in dirty clothes.

  One pulled the helicopter’s door open. The smell of body odor rushed in with the warm night air. Above, the helicopter’s main rotor roared. Wind pushed down.

  Hands grabbed Peyton. They were rough, gouging into the muscles of her arms. Voices shouted in Swahili and another language she didn’t know—Somali, perhaps. Desmond kicked a man reaching for him, punched another. A rifle was pressed to his face, and he froze.

  Peyton could hear Avery fighting too, screaming obscenities.

  The men dragged Peyton out, onto the ground, then held her up for a tall black man to inspect. Behind her, she heard them grabbing Hannah.

  “Don’t touch her!” she yelled, but the words were lost in the commotion.

  Chapter 70

  Peyton fought the men holding her as the helicopter’s rotors thundered overhead. It took four large men to subdue Desmond, but they finally brought him down. They held him on the ground, twisting his arms behind him, but still, he refused to cry out—or to stop fighting back.

  The crowd of rifle-carrying militia parted, and a middle-aged black man hurried through. Whoever he was, he was in charge.

  Peyton had seen him exactly once before: in a large room in Mandera, filled with dying people. He had lain in a corner then, sweat covering his body, three buckets beside him: one for feces, one for vomit, and one for urine.

  That day, Peyton had given him a lifeline: a dose of ZMapp. She had hoped it might cure him.

  It had.

  Dr. Elim Kibet was vibrant now, his eyes full of life.