by Michael Todd
Marty’s eyes widened and he picked up the first file to flip through the research and photos of test subjects. The unknown voice continued. “The second file is that of Corporal Alexander Conner. He has worked with the research since day one. I have found evidence, included in that file, showing that he has been stealing the chemical and selling it to Russian operatives to be used to exterminate specific ethnic groups. An ethnic cleansing, if you will.”
Intrigued now, he opened the relevant file and read through the information. The voice grew shaky for a moment. “It is vital you do not go to the US embassy or military with this. Someone is working on the inside and they have the ability to release this chemical on the world, which is exactly what they plan to do. Corporal Conner will enter the Zoo tonight and will proceed to the epicenter—the center point at this moment. His job is to release the chemical toxin into the air. Due to the wind tunnel action and the weather patterns, there is a very high chance this chemical will be caught in the atmosphere and carried all over the world. You need to stop him. The goop contains the compounds of the venom you researched in your flower.”
Suddenly, everything seemed to move in slow motion. He dropped the files on his desk and his friends stopped their discussion to stare at him. A sick feeling settled in his stomach as he scanned his finger down Conner’s file to locate his tracking ID. Quickly, he logged into the database and typed the number into the system. He swallowed hard as a map appeared on the screen and zoomed in to show him an area inside the Zoo. It was night and there was no reason for the man to be in there. He was alone, as well, which was against the military code.
Marty knew he had to do something. It was obvious that whoever sent it to him was telling at least the partial truth. If he didn’t move and move fast, the world would feel the wrath of the very flower that he had been so proud to discover. He stood and shoved the chair away from the desk. When he turned, he found the other two men watching him intently.
Mark tried to catch his gaze. “What’s up, dude?”
He stared at his friend for a second before he turned, grabbed all the files from his desk, and rushed off through the building. He ran as fast as he could, scrambled into one of the Humvees, and tossed the files into the passenger seat. Time seemed to actually tick in his brain and he accelerated to maximum speed. When he reached his apartment, he almost fell over himself to get inside and yank his suit and helmet from the closet. He didn’t waste another minute there and simply snatched his pack already put together for his upcoming trip and headed back to the Humvee.
As the vehicle roared across the sand, all Marty could think about was the toxin he had researched. He had never been the kind of guy who was a hero. Instead, he had always been the nerdy science guy but he took his discoveries very seriously. He was the one who’d ultimately put that weapon into the guy’s hands. Whoever was helping the soldier in the government made it impossible for Marty to do anything but what he now chose to do, so courage would have to come, whether he liked it or not.
He arrived at the staging area—which was, thankfully, deserted—and half fell out of the vehicle. Surprisingly calm despite the fact that his heart hammered in his chest, Marty stripped and pulled his suit on, then activated the HUD. “Find personnel number 5289634.”
The map pulled the man up. It looked like he hadn’t made it as far as he was supposed to but either way, the destruction would be catastrophic. Marty slung the rear passenger door of the Humvee open and raised the back seat. Inside was an array of weapons. He knew about it because he’d done a stint driving dignitaries around for the military when he had first arrived. They were there just in case. He quickly selected two daggers and an M-16 and slammed the door shut.
Turning, he stared at the shrouded jungle and his eyes blinked wildly. He’d never imagined he would go in like that, not even in his wildest dreams. He took a deep breath and mustered his inner strength. As he stepped into the forest, he whispered to himself, “For all mankind.”
The forest was thick and untamed, but between the heat-sensing gear in his HUD and the lights on the outside of his helmet, Marty closed slowly on his target’s location. From the look of the map, there was a clearing ahead, and he flicked his headlamp off. A flicker of light showed between the trees like candles burning in a small draft. He stepped cautiously to the edge of the clearing and narrowed his eyes to focus on the figure standing there.
Corporal Conner was not what Marty imagined. He was young with a short blond crew-cut and perfectly pressed fatigues, and a gun lay on the ground beside him. He had, incongruously, lit candles all around the clearing to illuminate the center of the forest. In front of him, a small box with some sort of apparatus that looked like a flare gun rested on the ground. The corporal had his eyes shut and he breathed slowly in and out as he knelt among the leaves.
A small chime emitted on his watch and the soldier’s eyes opened. The shadows from the dancing flames writhed around him like devils in worship. He breathed in heavily through his nose and picked up the box to open the lid. With a small sigh, he lifted a small vile of bluish-green liquid and looked closely at it.
Carefully, Marty deactivated his HUD. He knew he wouldn’t be able to shoot effectively if he had it on. No matter how much it linked to the system, it never provided an accurate shot. He didn’t want to kill the corporal—that was not his place. Unfortunately, while the man’s death was inevitable, it wouldn’t be his bullet that did the deed. The bits and pieces of information he’d crammed in from the research indicated that the vial’s contents would only spread efficiently if, one, launched from an explosion and two, went high enough in the atmosphere.
Very quietly, he pulled his rifle around in front of him and dropped on one knee. He looked through the sight of his gun as the corporal once again lifted the vial into the light. There was no doubt that he would place it in the gun and fire it up into the canopy of the trees. It would kill them both in a matter of minutes and the rest of the world in only weeks.
As the corporal whispered inaudibly to himself, Marty took aim at the vial and pressed his finger down hard on the trigger. The small container exploded before he even heard the gun go off. The liquid inside immediately transformed into a white puffy gas like a small cloud that hovered in front of the corporal’s face. As the man breathed reflexively, the cloud and all its toxins flowed into his nose and down to his lungs.
Marty dropped his weapon and closed the lock on his helmet. “Airtight seal on.”
The suit immediately diverted to the oxygen tanks in the back. There wasn’t enough to last for a significant period of time, but he had to know what the corporal had thought when he’d embarked on this horrific mission. As soon as the green light blinked, he ran into the clearing in time to catch the soldier in his arms as he fell back.
He looked at the kid, who now literally cried tears of blood. His face had contorted and turned a greenish color. He looked at the man who cradled him and put his hand on Marty’s helmet. “Thank you for stopping me. There is more to this than you know. These…people…are…dangerous.”
The kid coughed and blood covered the hand he’d used to shield his mouth. He reached shakily into the pocket of his suit and withdrew a drive. “Take this…it has everything. All the information missing from the files. It is the recipe for perfect chemical warfare and details of all those involved.”
Marty took the drive and shoved it into his pocket. When he looked at the corporal once more, his face had gone blank and blood flowed from every orifice. He dropped the young man, stood, and took a moment to look around the area. At first, he walked slowly to his gun but once there, he left it resting on the ground and bolted through the woods. He leapt over fallen trees and completely ignored the hissed warnings of the slumbering man-eating plants. All he could think about was to get as far away from the scene as possible. The chemical was no longer a threat.
When he reached the Staging Area, he ran the suit’s decontamination process before he removed his
helmet and inserted the chip. He placed the helmet back on and sat in the vehicle as he sifted through the videos, the images, and the research. When he was done, he removed the drive and secured it in his pocket. Setting the helmet down, he turned the Humvee on and headed out, not in the direction of the town but as far away as he could go.
Marty knew he had to leave.
Holly’s mouth dropped open and she put her hands out in protest. “So he stopped a possible terrorist attack that would have annihilated the world and he simply ran? No word to anyone?”
JB chuckled. “You hate stories without happy endings, don’t you?”
One of the older inebriated men at the end of the bar hiccupped drunkenly and mumbled, “I’ll give her a happy ending.”
The bartender scowled and threw the bar towel at him. Paula snickered before she placed a cup of coffee in front of the old man. “Oh, Lou, you couldn’t even give yourself a happy ending. To do that, your dick actually has to function. I’m pretty sure, as old as you are, that shit fell off years ago.”
Holly chuckled and looked at JB. “So what happened to him?”
He shrugged. “There is a rumor that he didn’t run away permanently but rather, he had learned something and when it was time, he would be back again.”
She frowned her obvious displeasure. “And when is the right time?”
JB chuckled and leaned forward to look in her the eyes. “Whenever the danger of admitting what he knows is less than the danger to the world of not sharing his knowledge. Just because you find something out in the Zoo doesn’t mean you need to share the information. Sometimes, you have to weigh the consequences and decide whether to save yourself if you know others will be spared for the time being. He was the only one who had the information, and he needed to keep it out of the wrong hands.”
Holly went silent. There was so much truth to that story—way more than in any other he had told before. He was right. Sometimes, the right thing to do wasn’t as black and white as one might think.
Chapter Seven
Holly hadn’t stayed late at the bar the night before. After the story, she felt the need to go back to the apartment and start on some of the research she wanted to do. She didn’t have everything she needed but she could at least start writing down the information she had stuck in her head. The next morning, though, she grabbed her laptop and headed to FUBAR. For some reason, she didn’t want to be alone, and with JB feeling decent enough, she knew he would be around.
She walked into the quiet bar and took her normal spot. As she opened her laptop bag, JB emerged from the kitchen, wiping his hands. “Wow, you’re here early. Want some breakfast? I got bacon and eggs back here. And coffee.”
Holly smiled. “I would love all of the above.”
He clapped and returned to the kitchen. She pulled her laptop from the bag, opened it, and entered her password. While she waited for her breakfast, she began her searches and rummaged through endless information to find the type of equipment she would need to work inside the Zoo as well as outside. She hoped it could be a combo set, but she would use what she could get her hands on—and what she could afford.
Several moments later, JB returned and set a plate of food down beside her and a hot cup of coffee in front of her. “I know you can’t survive without your elixir of life.”
Holly groaned, picked the coffee up, and took a long sip. “Mmm, this is surprisingly good. I figured it would be the same old bland coffee as usual.”
He chuckled. “I gave you some of my stash. I do have the boring stuff for these fools, but I keep real Columbian-grown espresso beans in the back. I grind them myself.”
She shivered with real appreciation. “That’s music to my ears. Thank you.”
JB walked away and Holly grabbed a piece of bacon while she stared at the screen. There were so many options, she wished she could actually look at them in person. She had a good idea of what she needed, especially with the information Billie had gotten her, but it was hard to tell what you were getting when you shopped online.
The door opened behind her but she didn’t turn around. Dan pulled a stool up beside her and tossed his hat on the bar. He looked at her screen and raised his eyebrows. “Whatcha doing? Looking up older versions of field-ready science labs?”
Holly furrowed her brow and glanced at him. “I don’t understand. Older versions?”
She pointed to her screen and at the sales date, which showed that the equipment wasn’t even fully on the market yet. “This is state-of-the-art stuff. People are on waiting lists for some of it, especially out here. I don’t think you can get much fresher than this.”
He laughed and sat as JB walked up with a cup of coffee. “Thank you, JB. Good to see you’re still rolling. Must have been one hell of a case of the flu.”
The bartender chuckled nervously. “Yeah. It was rough. Hopefully, it’s gone for good this time, but we’ll see.”
Dan looked at Holly, who waited for him to explain his statement. He smirked and nodded his head. “Anything on the market for sale for the normies is old stuff.”
He leaned over, looked at her screen, and pointed at one of the sets she had considered. “Shit, some of it—like that one—is from five years ago.”
Holly stared at him, completely confused. Dan glanced quickly from her to JB. “None of your stories covered this?”
The bartender shook his head. “The Zoo, for better or worse, has all the new stuff tested out there in the thick of it.”
She was shocked. “So, if it’s on the market, it’s already outdated?”
Dan nodded. “Yep. That is exactly right. Although most things in life are. Before one edition even hits the market, the second one is has already been conceived. See, you test in real life. The government doesn’t care if you kill it and take your life in your own hands. So, whether it works great or fails miserably, it doesn’t really cost them anything but whatever the expense of that equipment is. Scientists out here have become exactly like skateboarders. They are sponsored by different companies, test out their new stuff, rep their connections, and are always ahead with the best technology in the market.”
Holly grimaced. “Oh, God, to be out there on the verge of a serious discovery and have the whole toolset stop working. That is the kind of shit that haunts people like me. We can’t even comprehend something like that. I feel like that would be the point where I told the company to go fuck themselves.”
JB laughed. “But then where do you get your state-of-the-art designs? How can you be the first to discover something? No one cares about the second guy who picked the unknown plant.”
She tilted her head from side to side to ease the growing tension in her neck. “You might actually be right on that. But I don’t know if I could do it if I was seriously invested in finding the new stuff. You would constantly be worried that your research was off because the equipment didn’t have anyone else testing it.”
Dan smiled. “True, but the statistics on that are pretty low. Most of the scientists won’t accept sponsorships from no-name companies. They want to work for the big boys and get the best stuff out there and the newest technology. If I told you that you could test the most technologically advanced set of equipment for free or buy the stuff that would be quickly outdated, what would you say?”
“I guess I would go with the new stuff.” Holly sighed. “But if it were something vital, that would be the time I considered it. So that’s crazy. All of these have the Zoo seal of approval.”
The two men exchanged glances and spoke in unison. “If it’s new, it’s been tried in the Zoo.”
“Well, obviously, online won’t be the place to find them.” Holly laughed and closed her laptop. “I guess I’ll have to contact some of the larger companies and figure out how to get on their lists. Maybe they have some tested equipment that they are willing to sell for a cheaper price.”
Dan nodded as he sipped his coffee. “That’s one way to do it, for sure. I can tell you now, though, th
e waiting list is three years minimum and the used equipment isn’t much less than what the product will be brand new.”
Holly groaned. “So what am I supposed to do? I need this equipment now. I don’t have time to wait for that. It also feels pointless to buy stuff that I know will be replaced on the market shortly.”
“I’ll help. I know a guy who sells all that stuff.”
She perked up. “Really?”
“Yeah, but unfortunately, there is a zero-credit policy. Sorry. They don’t want to credit out to someone who might not come back and they never see the merch again.”
“I have money, but this stuff is expensive. Okay. Not a problem. I’ll do whatever I need to do.”
JB stood quietly but he’d listened intently. “No, you know what? I’ll cover all the equipment costs.”
Dan stood and grabbed his phone. “Cool. I’ll give him a call and see if he is open.”
As he walked away, Holly looked awkwardly at JB. “You didn’t need to do that.”
He smiled and touched her hand. “You are doing all this for me. I can at least help foot the bill.”
The other man returned and grabbed his hat. “He’s there now. Do you want to go?”
Holly nodded and shoved her laptop into its bag. “Let’s go shopping for the future of mankind!”
Hickok glanced around before she opened the door to the small plane and closed it behind her. Her gaze swept the passenger area, which had enough room for two people but not much more. She made her way into the cockpit and flipped the lights on.
With her finger pressed to her ear, she told Marcus, “I’m in and ready when you are. You are the one driving the thing, after all.”
He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’ve only crashed two in simulations.”