EMERGENCE: Incursion

by JT Sawyer

  Reisner tilted his head, looking up at the ceiling. “No, that’s not what this was. I thought that could have been the case, but I recall her lips moving as she spoke—as clearly as you and I are right now.”

  “It’s not entirely without validity,” said Selene. “We all know that those creatures are higher-functioning, particularly in light of the news Runa shared from the Lachesis about the alpha who was carrying vials of synthetic hormones. Such creatures most likely experienced minimal brain death after succumbing to the initial virus and may not have suffered a severe drop-off in IQ or vocal abilities. It may just have taken until now for this ability to manifest itself.” She put her hands on her hips.

  Reisner let out a sigh. “That’s not all—when we were on the run, just before we made it to the prison, we came across a captive—a guy named Morgan. He claimed he escaped from the tunnels where the alpha was holding him and some others.” Reisner rubbed his chin. “Other than looking a little gaunt, he didn’t show any signs of the infection that we’re used to seeing, but clearly there must have been something brewing inside him—something he probably didn’t even know about.”

  “What makes you say that?” said Hemmings. “Most victims turn within minutes after being bit or exposed.”

  “I know, but this is different—he got steadily weaker as the day wore on. Morgan was the one who disabled the power grid for the outer perimeter around the prison, killing himself in the process. I only had a second to examine the footage on the prison cameras, but I saw one of those large parasites like we’ve seen in the alphas—it was jutting out of the back of his skull after he was electrocuted.” He leaned forward, clutching his fingers on the desk. “I just can’t get over the feeling that his coming across our group in that particular location was…” he flared his eyebrows up as he let out an exhale, “it was pre-planned by the alpha, who had introduced something parasitic that we haven’t seen before into his system.”

  “Making him into a sleeper—is that what you’re implying?” said Dorr.

  “I know how this sounds, but I was there—this guy brought down our defenses in mere seconds. Imagine if something like this happened at MacDill or one of our other bases—we’d be destroyed from within by a single individual who was being controlled from a distance by an alpha.”

  Dorr swiped his fingers across his cheek, his eyes widening. “Christ, this could be catastrophic—all the more reason we need to carry out Phase Two of Operation Raptor with haste.”

  “What about deterrents to prevent someone who is infected like this from re-entering the base, say after a mission?” said Runa.

  “I’m working on that,” said Selene. “One suggestion for now is to set up extra LRAD devices at the entrances and have all returning personnel scanned to see if they react to the sonic waves. Anyone that does should be placed in quarantine and under guard.” Selene moved closer to the wall monitor. “Whatever is happening, what Will is describing shows a growing level of sophistication—I don’t think what occurred in L.A. was the result of one clever alpha. I think what we’re seeing, from the other reports you’ve shared from around the country, is that their collective mind is not limited to just contact between the alphas and their drones. There is something—some transfer of information being shared between alphas—perhaps on a global level for all we know.”

  “That would help explain the cat-and-mouse game that we were just involved with,” said Nash. “That alpha had plenty of opportunities to kill all of us, but instead she corralled us towards her objective—the prison—so we could get inside with Morgan for her. That’s a level of tactical brilliance that still makes my head spin.”

  “Let’s hope you’re wrong about that,” said Dorr. “For now, continue on with your research, Doctor Munroe, and let me know what you find out.” Dorr glanced down at his watch. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a briefing to give to our attack squadron commanders for Phase Two, which commences at dawn. After this air assault, we should eliminate close to a thousand alphas spread in cities throughout the nation. Tomorrow will be a historic day in the beginning of retaking our country and this world.”

  Hemmings moved front and center of the screen. “You’ve all done a remarkable job, both in getting all of your personnel out of danger and thwarting numerous attacks on our nation, from within and without. I for one am grateful.” She pressed in closer, her face filling up the monitor as she focused on Reisner. “Now, go get some rest—you’ve sure earned it and then some.”

  “Yes, ma’am, said Reisner, along with an echo of voices from the other operators in the room.

  Hemmings nodded, then turned to Runa, who took over. He kept glancing over at something off camera to his right. “I have a few operational details to discuss with Agent Reisner, so if you could give us the room, that would be appreciated.”

  Reisner was looking forward to speaking with his boss, but he hoped it could wait until later. Right now, he just wanted to lie down and sleep for a month. Once the room was empty, Runa moved in closer to the monitor. “Will, I can’t tell you how good it is to see your face. It’s been a long road you’ve walked and you’ve done well to keep so much of that hair on your head.”

  “You as well, my friend. I never thought I’d see you again.” Reisner stared at Runa then lowered his head, rubbing the back of his neck. When he looked up again, he saw Jody standing beside his boss. Reisner’s heart skipped a beat and his eyes began to tear up.

  “Jody—is that really you?” He pressed his hand to the screen, his cheeks quivering as tears streamed down both of their faces. She kept shaking her head, sobbing as Runa rested his hand on her shoulder before walking away to leave brother and sister alone.

  Jody leaned in closer, her eyes studying his bruised face. “God, are you alright, Will?”

  “I am now, sis. I am now.”

  ***

  That evening, after finishing a short after-action report with his team, Reisner took the elevator to the third sub-floor, which housed the civilian and scientific staff. He moved past the shower room then the lounge, until he was at room C34. He glanced down at the number he had penned on his hand after he had overheard Selene mention her room number earlier. He saw a young nurse walking by and he nervously looked down at his watch as if he was preoccupied with something else until she passed. She gave him an awkward glance, probably wondering why his face was a medley of black and blue interspersed with steri-strips. He raised his hand to knock, then sighed. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. He questioned whether he should have kissed her earlier in L.A., then recalled the tremendous chemistry between them during the past week. He hesitated, then cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles on the door. We should at least talk after all we’ve both been through in the past twenty-four hours. We can just have a friendly discussion and then I can leave.

  A second later, the door squeaked open and Selene’s face appeared. She had a white towel wrapped around her head and was wearing a bathrobe. He could smell the scent of peach shampoo floating out between them, and he felt his breathing lighten.

  “Will, this is unexpected—are you alright?” Her eyes darted around the battered surface of his face, then down to the bruises on his forearms. He knew she must be disturbed looking at his injuries, and he chided himself for attempting to see her while looking so bad. The middle of her bathrobe was slightly open, and he could see her trim neckline. God, he wanted to shove her back into the room and run his hands along her sultry figure.

  She put her hand on his forearm and smiled. “Everything OK?”

  “Can we, uhm, talk for a minute?” He started to move forward, wanting to be out of the hallway before anyone came by and interrupted them.

  She stepped aside, waving him in. “Of course.”

  The second the door closed, he moved in towards her, pressing her against the wall and kissing her deeply. She moaned and slid her arms around his neck. He unraveled the thin belt holding together her robe and ran his hands along her slender
waist. He could feel how firm her body was, and realized her figure was even more incredible than he imagined. He kissed her neck, inhaling the lovely fragrance of her blond hair. Reisner felt her nails run along his shoulders as she carefully removed his shirt. She pulled him closer, then kissed him while tugging on his hand as she led him to the other room, where a foldout couch was located. He dimmed the light switch on the wall and then he sat her down, gliding his hands along her silky legs. She scooted closer to his waist, entwining her legs around him as she continued loosening his clothes, every now and then stopping to kiss his chest and shoulders. The aching in his limbs washed away and was replaced by an insatiable hunger as he wrapped his arms around her, their naked bodies intertwining as they rolled back together onto the bed. The hours slipped away and the chaos outside of these walls faded as he thought only of the lovely woman in front of him, staring into Selene’s loving eyes and feeling her body melt into his.

  Chapter 34

  “You miss your morning coffee, bro?” quipped Reisner as he walked with an easy stride into the conference room the next day, smiling at Ivins, whose expression was oscillating between concern and surprise.

  “Phase Two of Operation Raptor was just terminated by Dorr.”

  “What—why?”

  General Dorr’s face appeared on the wall monitor before Ivins could answer. The general could be seen giving a briefing to the packed room at MacDill, his mood pensive.

  “At 0600 Eastern Time this morning, we received intel from satellite feed that our intended targets, the alphas that were located in over 93 cities throughout the U.S., had dispersed from their former lairs. In some cases, the alphas and entire legions of their drones moved up to forty miles during an eight-hour period.” He tapped on the keyboard of his laptop, pulling up an overhead image on the screen behind him. He moved to the side, using a laser pointer on the image of a United States map. “Each of the red highlighted areas indicates a city that was to be targeted with precision strikes today.” He moved his pointer over to a bright blue spot southwest of Chicago. “This location is where the alphas and their drones now reside in this region according to satellite imagery obtained an hour ago.” He clicked on the blue spot, which brought up a new slide, showing a nuclear reactor. “It’s typical of the other regions where the alphas have relocated.” The audience before Dorr began breaking out in muffled conversation, and Reisner heard many comments about the shocking intelligence of the enemy. The faces of most of the senior officers in the front row seemed to drain of color, while several special operations personnel a few rows back gave sideways glances to their fellow brethren while their expressions grew solemn as they whispered amongst themselves. Reisner couldn’t remember ever seeing an audience of such battle-hardened warriors turn grave in mere seconds, as if the ground had cracked open and drained the room of any sense of hope in destroying the enemy.

  Reisner stepped back a few feet from the monitor, his eyes darting along the floor at the shocking development. He looked over at Ivins who had crossed his arms and crumpling his fists into his sleeves as he let out a deep exhale.

  They both turned their attention back to the video screen as Dorr’s voice pierced the air, quieting the audience before the general.

  “This changes things considerably, and after conferring with my staff, we are terminating Operation Raptor and will be looking at ground initiatives for select regions.”

  Reisner and Ivins both looked at each other, their expressions grim. “Boots on the ground, walking right into their lairs—I don’t like the sound of that,” said Ivins. “Our existing teams of operators are stretched thin as it is.”

  Dorr returned to the podium, taking questions from several individuals in the front row.

  “What about using the LRAD devices to drive the paras from their locations?” said an army special forces officer.

  “That’s one option we’re looking at right now. Another is determining if something like Sarin gas or another toxin could be used to bring them out of their lairs.”

  “Are all of the new sites that the alphas have retreated to nuclear power plants?” said a marine commander.

  “It appears that way. There are over 210 nuclear sites in the U.S., some of which are reactors while others are waste stations or processing plants. Most of the blue spots on the map behind me are reactors though.”

  “Does this mean the cities have emptied out of the paras?” said a woman in a Navy outfit, whose gaze shot beyond Dorr towards the city of Houston. “And, if so, will there be rescue missions to look for survivors?”

  “So far from initial estimates, it appears that the alphas retreated to the nuclear sites with more than seventy percent of their drones. The other creatures left behind in the cities are perhaps a reserve force, or they might be used in another movement towards some other location that we haven’t identified yet.”

  He raised his hand again, indicating the Q&A was over. Dorr’s face tightened further and he narrowed his eyes as he looked out over the group of warriors before him.

  “I will be meeting with my other commanders to discuss options and also to confer with our allies abroad to see what military action they are planning to undertake. Anything we do from here on out will need to be orchestrated on a global level to prevent the alphas from gleaning too much information on our strategies. That alone will be a logistical undertaking that is unprecedented in military operations.” He clutched the edge of the podium, inhaling deeply. “Our enemy is constantly adapting and evolving and so must we. But make no mistake, we will destroy them and we will leave no region of the country under their control. That is all; return to your posts and await further orders for the next operation.”

  When the monitor went dark, Reisner turned around and leaned back on the edge of the desk. He had hoped that this day would turn the tide, wiping out thousands of alphas in a few hours and enabling them to get a greater foothold on vanquishing the menace that had laid waste to the world. Now, the option of using surgical bombing was out of the question, and humanity would be back to doing what it had done for thousands of years—marching their ground troops into the enemy’s stronghold to fight a conventional battle.

  “Something has changed,” said Ivins. “Why would the paras suddenly all retreat to the nuke sites in a matter of hours and in such an orchestrated fashion? Imagine the strategic thinking that is required to execute that—and how would they have deduced that they should use a nuclear reactor for their HQ?”

  “I’m not sure, but this just killed our chances of turning things around today.” Reisner shuffled forward, slamming his boot into a metal filing cabinet. “All this time, we’ve been thinking that conventional might and shrewd tactics could help us gain some ground—and just when we think hope for victory is around the corner, we are out-maneuvered by those fucking things. How is that possible?”

  Ivins removed the ballcap from his head and pressed on the arched sides of the bill, trying to force them into a greater curve. “The alphas are proving themselves to be more aggressively adaptive than any enemy we’ve ever faced on this planet. I’m not entirely sure conventional warfare is the answer, especially if they can see what plays out in one theater of operation and then work to prevent that from happening elsewhere before we can advance on them.”

  Reisner nodded, then walked to the window overlooking a mountain range to the east. Though there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the morning light seemed to have lost its brilliance, and part of him already hoped the day would be ending soon. He slowly traced his eyes along the ground until his gaze rested upon the laboratory across the courtyard, where Selene was busy working. He let out a faint sigh, feeling a glimmer of hope return. Now, more than ever, we could use a breakthrough on the scientific end that could crush the paras. Our ground forces alone aren’t going to be enough to win this war—but maybe there is still another way.

  Chapter 35

  Selene was up early the next morning, sitting in the lab again, poring over
her voluminous notes, looking for some correlation between the genetic markers in Amber’s blood, the original 1918 flu, and Hayes’ deadly strain. She felt like her mind was running laps on a race track without any exit in sight. She knew the answer to Amber’s immunity was found somewhere within all the information and computer models around her, but her brain was too taxed from unrelenting research during the past few days to venture another deduction. In the pre-pandemic world, she would have had a dozen biomed assistants and a CDC center staffed with colleagues on par with her field experience. Instead she was having to handle even the most tedious of duties that only served to stretch her already frayed capabilities to the limit.

  She rested her elbows on the desk, cradling her head in her hands. Her mind drifted back to the blissful night she had spent in Reisner’s arms. That was a bright spot that helped whittle away the growing headache that had plagued her since arriving in the lab earlier.

  Selene glanced down at Amber’s medical history, her eyes flitting over the interview one of her assistants performed with Amber the day they all arrived at the CDC. The only thing unusual that stood out in the young mother’s health history was a severe respiratory infection that she’d had two months earlier in September. Something in the notes caught Selene’s eye, and she shot upright in her chair. Standing, she hurried through the lab towards the elevator doors. Arriving on the fifth floor, she trotted down the medical bay to Amber’s room. The woman was sitting up in her bed, partaking of a breakfast of oatmeal and canned fruit. Selene slid in past the nurse and asked for a moment alone. Chris was still asleep on the cot next to his mother’s bed, and Selene quietly pulled up a chair then sat close to Amber.

  “Good morning. It’s so good to see you again,” said Amber.

  “Yes, it is. You look like you’re recovering well—this is the first time I’ve seen you smile since we met.”

  Amber’s smile widened, and she leaned over to stroke her son’s head. “My baby and I are out of that city and safe now, thanks to you and your friends—what’s not to be happy about.” Her jade green eyes glanced at Selene as she grinned. “But I can tell this isn’t a social visit. You seem like you’re runnin’ on three cups of coffee this morning.”