Project Apollo

by B. B. Gallagher

Your government has kept you in the dark and lied to you over and over again. In fact, they are doing it right now.

  The joint task force gazed on the bunker’s wall. After reading the last line of text, Marty Jacobs slammed the notebook in his hand down on the table.

  “They’re exposing it! Damnit! They knew we would keep it under wraps!” Jacobs yelled irate.

  How do we know this?

  The text faded, leaving merely a black screen behind. Then the surveillance footage from the NIH populated the television screen, showing Mohammad Azir breaking into to the laboratory.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Catherine and Tobias watched the surveillance footage in horror as the scene played out before them.

  The distorted voice spoke over the surveillance feed as it played the murder of Dr. Woslowski and the intruder stealing the contagion from the lab.

  A deadly bacterium from the NIH was stolen and transported to Washington, DC by radical islamic terrorists.

  Catherine shuttered at the sight of the footage of the NIH, reliving the horror of the day prior.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Rachel Norton gazed upon the feed amid a crowd gathered in the BNA bullpen. An intern could be heard crying from the sight of watching a man fall dead.

  “That was yesterday!” one of her researchers announced, referencing to the time stamp in the corner of the surveillance feed. The feed cut, and the screen returned to black. More words came over the video.

  Two targets in the DC metro area, including the White House, have already been attacked today.

  The staff around her gasped in shock at the announcement. The crowd grew from confused to panicked.

  “Somebody get Frank, I want to know what’s going on in the White House right now!” Rachel ordered, needing word from BNA’s White House correspondent before believing it.

  Your government also knows that two more targets will be hit in DC today.

  But there has been no mention to the American public that this deadly plague is spreading throughout the city.

  Are you tired of living in the dark?

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  The employees of BNA fell silent at the proposed question on the screen.

  We know that the cure is truth and our government plagues us with lies. We are the Collective. Are you?

  The feed faded, and the news footage returned to perplexed anchors at the news desk in BNA’s studio.

  “We are sorry for that… it appears that we are experiencing some technical difficulties…” But they weren’t as Porter Nash looked around the BNA studios everything had immediately returned to normal. It was as if nothing had happened. The control room operated effectively and the computers became responsive again. Porter looked around his office and then dropped his eyes to the flash drive sticking out of his computer. He yanked it out immediately.

  “Holy God! What just happened?”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Back in the bunker, everyone was distraught. People yelled over the phone and the President pounded his fist on the table, demanding answers.

  “What the hell was that?! They just hijacked the news?!” the President shouted.

  “They want the city in a panic,” Jacobs offered, still shocked by the video.

  “We have to close the city down immediately… This is going to incite chaos!” Janet Powers aggressed.

  “Yes, you’re right. Send in the National Guard. We must control the situ—” the President’s words were overcome by an itch that had lay root in his esophagus.

  He nodded the affirmative to Powers, but remained huddled over himself and brought a hand up to his throat to everyone’s concern.

  The itch gave way to a lump that rose up into his throat, he could not swallow it down. He tried to gently clear his throat but to no avail. He only agitated it more.

  And then an unmistakable sound came over the bunker, causing everyone to stop their work and look up at the President.

  A sound that was as deafening as an explosion on this day.

  A sound that came from the President himself in the most secure place in the country.

  It was the sound of a hacking cough.

  PART 3: INFECTION

  Chapter 30

  The Compound

  12PM

  Fiona strolled through the rundown Compound, following the footsteps of her past. She walked down the sidewalk of the barracks, a row of cottage-like houses where they had lived during training. She remembered the snowball fight with Xander, during the days of their awkward and innocent crush. She passed through the wilted Thicket and sat on the bench at the pond, a place she had enjoyed so many times before. But now the pond had dried up, the tree branches had twisted as if strangling themselves to death and all of the pathway lights were burned out.

  Something is in here that Ezra wants me to find. Something related to all of this. But what the hell is it?...

  The clock had struck noon, so she returned to the cube with no answers.

  En route, Fiona pulled her hair back into a bun – a habit she had when preparing for work. She stepped toward the cube and pounded on the glass with the side of her fist. Ezra lifted his head, confirmed the time on the large digital clock mounted on the wall, and began to speak his next clue.

  Black and White Shows Six Colored Lines Weaving

  Grab Your Post And Solve To Find the Meaning

  Encircled Therein Is Your Next Marker

  The Truth Comes Clearer as Lies Grow Darker

  Fiona stayed fastened on Ezra. “Is that it?”

  Ezra did not respond, rather his mouth spliced into an insidious grin.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Xander held the phone to his ear in the back of the van that barreled toward central DC. “Black and white shows six colored lines weaving, grab your post and solve to find the meaning, encircled therein is your next marker, the truth comes clearer as lies grow darker…” he repeated aloud for Seamus and Ashton in the van as well as for the bunker full of people observing from the camera on his ear.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” Fiona responded.

  “How are you doing?” His voice lowered in volume, hoping to find a sense of privacy.

  “I’m fine… he says that he’s leading you on a quest to find the truth about you, he said after today, you’ll never be the same. I don’t see why he couldn’t just tell you what he wants you to know so badly…”

  “Madmen have strange methods…”

  “He also said that he has something in store for me. A truth that I must learn. But my clues are here in the Compound. He said that I must learn the truth about Sparta.”

  “Well you know the drill, if you need him to talk… you might have to force it out of him.” A strange voice came into his ear, unexpectedly. Marty Jacobs, the Chief of Staff, had slammed his hand down on the microphone into Xander’s ear.

  “I don’t think so, Xander! If she starts torturing Ezra he may not give us anymore of the target locations. The only reason we have been able to contain this outbreak up to this point as well as we have, is because we have played his game and solved his clues!”

  “Mr. Jacobs, how much field experience have you had?” Xander had no time for diplomacy.

  “I don’t have to have field experience to know that torturing someone may discourage them from sharing their life story with us.” Xander knew that his years of politics had lent his rhetoric a condescension beyond all others.

  “Listen here, Mr. Jacobs.” Xander’s voice lowered to a biting hiss. “While you were hob-knobbing at the yacht club with your Harvard law friends during the Fourth of July, I was preventing this traitor from blowing up innocent civilians on the National Mall. I watched as he put a bullet in my friend’s head. It is apparent to me that he wanted to get captured for the very purpose of playing this game. And he is playing it with me and my wife. I would appreciate it if you let us play back.”

  There was no answer over the comm unit, until another voice spoke up – the President’s.

  �
�Xander, I’m afraid Marty is right. We can’t risk not getting the next clues. Per your Intel he still has two clues left. We cannot risk losing those. His plan is in motion without his direct involvement, he is our only key to the puzzle.” Xander silently balled his hand up into a fist, trying to suppress his anger silently. He drew a breath and then responded.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” He raised the phone back up to his ear and conveyed the order to Fiona.

  “Fiona, don’t touch him… yet.”

  “You got it.” There was a longing in her voice as she hung up the phone.

  Xander turned from his phone to Ashton on the other side of the van. Ashton’s mouth was flattened wide and her chin crinkled. Her concern was written over her face. She had only grown more anxious and worried since his blackout in Tobias’s laboratory. His eyes fell from her’s to his combat gear.

  “Any ideas?”

  “Are you okay?” she asked, ignoring the clue at hand in favor of a personal assessment.

  “I’m fine… do you have any ideas?” His voice raised over the rumbling of the van. After allowing a watchful eye to linger over him, she accepted the answer and moved on to consider the clue.

  “Black and white show six colored lines… It’s a paradox. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What has six colors?” Xander asked aloud.

  “13 stripes on the flag…” Seamus called from the driver seat.

  “Thank you, Agent Obvious!” Ashton called back up to him.

  “Hush up! We’re here…” He parked the van in an alley way alongside a small two-story pub.

  “Why are we at a pub?” Ashton asked.

  “I don’t know about you guys, but I sure as hell could use a drink.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  BNA studio was mired in chaos as news personnel searched wildly for answers. The whole office scrambled for any form of information to feed their anchor on set. Porter Nash lingered near the doorway of the production control room, reflecting on the takeover swirling around him. He watched as BNA’s chief news anchor tried to form an explanation for their viewing audience, but his words only came out as aimless conjecture and speculation.

  Adam Nichols was a squirrelly looking man who had a long and storied career as managing editor and chief news anchor for all breaking news. His coverage of the BNA hack, solely consisted of reviewing the transcript from the video and dissecting any visual cues the tape could have offered.

  “We are still awaiting word from the White House on the matter and we don’t want to give much credence to the message in the video before we can verify it with our sources,” he explained into the camera.

  “Take it to commercial!” Rachel Norton yelled in frustration from the production control room.

  Nichols winced at the barking order in his ear, keeping as much composure as he could muster. He exhaled for the camera and led the viewers to break.

  “We will be back right after this…”

  A distant voice sounded from behind the camera. “And… cut!”

  “Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?!” Nichols stood up from the desk on set as soon as the red light turned out above the camera.

  “We’re working on it!” Rachel yelled back to the stage over the intercom. “Where the hell is Frank!” she demanded to the control room.

  “We haven’t been able to get a hold of him…” a staffer answered.

  Rachel leaned upright from her edits of a rough outline of talking points. Her hand snatched the piece of paper off the desk, crumbled it and threw it to the corner. She eyed her team in the control room.

  “What are we going to say?” Her voice lowered to a direct intensity.

  “We could just ignore it,” a tech offered.

  “If we ignore it, we look like idiots. Our phones are ringing off the hook from other news agencies demanding answers to what we just ran! We have to tell them something,” she explained.

  “Well, we don’t know what happened!” An IT guy named Josh Ryder spoke up from his monitor.

  “Does anyone know what is going on here?” Rachel pleaded for any kind of answer.

  “I do…” Porter finally piped up from the doorway. The eyes in the control room turned to him. Stepping into the control room, he began his explanation.

  “I met a contact about an hour ago, who said they had evidence, related to the missing scientists. He gave me this instead.” Porter brought out the flash drive. “I plugged this into my computer to see what was on it. When I accessed the drive’s folder, there were no files on it, which I thought was odd. It froze my computer though, so I restarted my machine. Only a minute after the reboot, everything went haywire and the video played,” he explained.

  “That flash drive could have had some kind of virus on it that could have infiltrated and seized our network,” Josh spoke up again.

  “So, who is this contact?” Rachel asked.

  “I have no idea who it was, he did mention that his organization was not behind the attacks.”

  “Could have been someone from a hacktivist group. The virus would have to be incredibly advanced to do this—” Josh added but was directly cut off by Rachel.

  “So, we’ve been hacked?” Rachel turned to him.

  “Yes… I’ll probe our network for any foreign bodies, but –” he was cut off again.

  “Thanks Porter for making us the news! You’ve made the network look pathetic. We’ll be the laughing stock of the country! Zucker is going to be pissed and I’m going to get fired!” Rachel’s frustration ignited into a fury. Porter remained tranquil, offering a calming gesture.

  “We need to own this, Rachel. This could be the biggest news story since 9/11. We are at ground zero. We are under attack and everyone can tune in to see it,” Porter explained.

  “But won’t that stir panic?” Josh asked, being the outsider to news broadcasting.

  “Our ratings will skyrocket…” Porter appealed.

  “But if this story is a hoax and we report it…” Rachel’s words trailed. She knew her career was on the line along with BNA’s reputation. Her eyes lifted to the monitor to see the third commercial play, knowing her time was soon up.

  “How do you suppose we go about breaking this?” Rachel asked with professional caution.

  “We already broke it,” Porter reminded her. “We just have to report on it now. I suggest you put me up there. I’ll tell the camera exactly what I just told you. One thing is apparent and that is that DC is under attack. The man I met, said, ‘You shall learn the truth and expose it.’ I think this is just the tip of the iceberg, Rachel,” he appealed to her journalistic spirit.

  She considered it a moment longer but was interrupted by a staffer bursting through the door.

  “Just got a hold of Frank… the White House has been in lockdown for the last two hours…” he reported out of breath. The words punched the air out of the room. Rachel turned to Porter with a daring smile.

  “Run it!”

  Chapter 31

  Washington, DC

  12:30PM

  A squadron of Black Hawk helicopters descended on the city. The four-blade twin engine aircrafts soared overhead, scattering to different edges of the city. Chopping through the air, a low thump echoed, as the residents of Washington, DC raised their heads skywards.

  Military transport cargo trucks barreled down the streets, alongside a caravan of Humvees. Upon reaching a major exit off the beltway, the trucks came to a stop. Fully armed soldiers of the National Guard, dressed in army fatigues and gas masks, piled out of the transport trucks and immediately started setting up road block barriers at each exit of the beltway.

  Unable to exit 495, commuting cars continued their revolution around the beltway, searching for a way out of the city, but there was none – the beltway was locked down. The city was in isolated containment and a million people were trapped inside.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  The President’s cough had been quelled for the moment. He composed hims
elf and continued to conduct the crisis management of the day, alongside his top advisors.

  “Where are we on the lockdown of the city?”

  “The beltway is closed down, the Metro is still running but only within the confines of the quarantine and all trains outside the perimeter have been stopped. Some of the secondary routes out of the city are still open but the Army has been dispatched. There will be an entire seal over the city in a matter of thirty minutes or so,” Powers updated the President, receiving an appreciative nod in return.

  “What do we do with this situation on BNA? It appears the other news networks have picked up on it.” The President’s eyes lifted to Porter Nash’s face explaining at a news desk what had happened. The banner at the bottom of the screen read: Plague Loose In DC. Another newsfeed’s headline read: BNA Hacked, DC Infected. The Chief of Staff scanned the TV monitors on the wall and gripped his fist till the whites in his knuckles popped.

  “This is going to cause panic!” Jacobs exclaimed through gritted teeth. “We could deny the claims.”

  The suggestion turned heads in the bunker.

  “Lie to the American public?” Hardy eyed him up and down. “That is ridiculous. The story is out, and the story is true. We need to man up and face the American public, explain the situation and provide direction and leadership.”

  “Confirming that a deadly bacterium is killing people across DC through a targeted assault from terrorists will only incite more panic! Panic leads to chaos, chaos leads to movement, movement leads to the disease spreading.” Jacobs looked to Fernandez for verification, which he received.

  “We have already confirmed it,” Powers spoke up.

  The bunker fell silent and turned to the National Security Advisor.