by M. Lorrox
Whew. She swallows. “Right on schedule. They completed fusing at six am, and I’m now working on implanting cells. When it’s ready, I’ll update you all and go back to work on the whip device.”
At that Hector smiles. “Truly excellent... I have another update for you both.” His eyes gleam. “She’s awake.”
Lars glances at Kazumi. “Well, we can’t have that, not yet. Her body must have adapted to the drugs.” He laughs to himself. “She is incredibly strong… She is still under guard, yes? Did you send that medic in to her? Erica something, correct?”
Hector starts to nod, then shakes his head. “The guards reported hearing her scream, but they didn’t enter. I haven’t alerted anyone else.”
“Okay, that’s good. Let’s give Ms. Wollstone some time now that she’s awake. I’ll have Erica prepare a different cocktail of sedatives.” Melgaard grins at Kazumi. “It sounds like she will be needing them…soon.”
Kazumi nods. “Yes, very soon. We’ll create a new world.” She glances away as she stands. I just wish specicide wasn’t a requirement.
The new hotel the High Council is using has a modest banquets area, which was rented out the past few days for the annual convention of the Mid-Atlantic Bird Lovers Association. When the attendees and organizers heard there were zombies in the Pentagon and rampaging inside DC, the convention was cancelled. Many exhibitors who had set up booths and decorations abandoned them when they fled. Now, the hotel’s staff has just finished clearing the banquets area, and the manager was so excited to re-rent it that he offered the space at a 50% discount.
Two long, rectangular tables are set alongside each other, making a more-square long table, and the High Council sits in 80’s era fabric chairs with chromed-tube legs. Bruce sniffs the air. “I swear it actually does smell like birds. Did they bring any with them?”
Penelope shrugs. “Could have been the people...”
Raúl glances at his watch. On cue, Sadie opens the doors at the end of the room and walks in. Not a minute early—not a second late.
She sniffs the air, and for a moment frowns, but then smiles. “This is a welcomed upgrade from the cramped hotel room. Thank you all for agreeing to a second round of meetings today.”
Eliza sips some blood from a bottle of . “Whatever is necessary.”
Sadie sits. “Before the events of Friday transpired, there was a house vote scheduled for...Monday, I believe...regarding whether the Vampire Order should go public. Many elders have left the area, and I believe that holding the vote tomorrow without their voices would be irresponsible. I’d like to ask for a vote on how we should proceed. I see three options.
“One, we conduct an in-person vote on Monday, as planned. Two, we conduct a distance vote, starting Monday and lasting one week. Three, we cancel the current vote, and reschedule it for the next all House meeting.” She turns to Eliza. “If I understand correctly, I only cast my vote if there’s a tie among the Council on this matter?”
“That is correct.”
Sadie nods. “Very well. Before continuing, does anyone see additional options available to us on this issue?”
No one says anything. Philip Simonsen and James Cartwright both shrug.
“Okay, then let’s put it to vote. Eliza, please begin.”
Eliza sighs and slides the freshly emptied bottle away from her. “If we went public soon, and it came out that a member of the Order helped create the terror unleashed in DC, we could face the kinds of fears we’ve held for millennia. Namely, they might seek our destruction. I vote that we postpone the vote until the next all House meeting. What’s another few years after the thousands we’ve waited?”
Sadie nods then motions to Philip.
He clears his throat. “I believe that the vote that was scheduled should be held, but in a way that allows as many elders to participate as possible. I believe we should hold a vote by letter.”
Around the table, each voice is heard and counted. When it’s Raúl’s turn to speak, everyone but Sadie has cast their vote. No one voted to hold the vote as planned, and three votes each have been cast toward the other options. He swallows. If I vote for holding the vote as planned, then Sadie will break the tie. But, I am on this council now. My opinion has more weight than any other elder, and to play games with it feels dishonorable.
Sadie clears her throat. “Raúl, I’d like to hear your voice on this matter.”
He nods. “I believe we should hold the vote by letter.”
I agree. Sadie nods. “Then it is settled; we shall begin to collect ballots tomorrow, and we will continue for seven days, as custom... Who’s in charge of updating the site and sending out the messages?”
Philip raises his uninjured hand. Although he now has some feeling in his right arm, he still lacks the ability to move it. “That falls under the Interior.”
“Very well.”
“Madam Prime Minister?” Vincent leans his head over the table.
“Yes?”
“I have some updates from Lieutenant Colonel Schermer about…our hunting party.”
Johannes runs back to the hangar where the knights and soldiers on team “STOP MELGAARD” are waiting. Charlie notices him and the excited look on his face, so he walks to meet him. “What’ve you got?”
“Good news: I got us a boat.”
“Where is it? Where will it pick us up?”
“I suppose if there’s bad news, it’s that we’re either looking at a four-hour drive to the boat, or we have to get back on a plane.”
All the others, who are listening in, groan.
Johannes smiles and speaks over Charlie’s shoulder. “It would just be a short flight. Your legs won’t even have the chance to cramp up.”
Charlie nods. “I agree, we can’t waste the time driving. Now we just need a plane to bring us—”
Johannes is shaking his head. “I took the initiative there too. It’ll pull up near the hangar when it’s ready.”
Charlie smiles. “You’re not too shabby at this fixer-gig, are you?”
He laughs. “Getting better every day.”
Balena takes a few steps away from the map and toward the old friends. She clears her throat to get their attention, and they both turn to her. “What’s the plan, exactly?”
Johannes walks over to the map to show her. He points at a body of water at the top of the map, northwest of Queenstown and northeast of their target. “Milford Sound gets a good amount of tourism, and I chartered us an ATR 72.”
She huffs. “I’m not familiar with every aircraft on earth...”
“Oh, sorry, it’s a twin-engine turboprop. From Milford, it’s only about a forty-nautical-mile trip to the drop-off options in Bligh Sound.”
Charlie steps over to them. “Is the boat already there in Milford?”
He smiles. “Apparently. My contact said, ‘it’s your lucky day.’”
Charlie scratches his neck. “That’s it? No other details?”
Johannes smirks. “And that when we get there to ask for Jono.”
Charlie shrugs and thinks of Jules. Trust the fixer, they take care of things.
Within an hour, the team is reloading their gear on the much smaller, regional plane. The cabin is significantly narrower than the 747’s, and they load all the equipment into the single center aisle, filling the plane almost halfway from the rear to the front.
With his teams working on his aggressive requests, Dr. Melgaard is free to work on another project—the initiative he knows will someday change the new world he’s creating.
He logs into his workstation and reviews data about Mithrilin, and his mind can’t help but wander to June and his good fortune. I never believed the answers to both my goals were found in one little specimen. And reports are that she survived... Amazing. We could harvest her bone marrow all over... Or even put her in stasis and far
m her.
A three-dimensional model of Mithrilin with its spiraling amino acid strands and peptide bonds displays on his screen. Absolutely amazing.
He smiles, then stands up from his desk and turns to a stack of shelves behind him. He shuffles items and papers around until he finds a small, digital voice recorder. He turns it on and checks the batteries. Hmm. I’ll just plug in the USB charger for now and record from the desk.
He sets it up, hits record, and takes a breath. “This is the personal log of Dr. Lars Melgaard, discoverer of the Mithrilin super-protein.” He leans back in his chair. “This morning, I made the discovery. It allows a single host to carry both an active strain of the zombie virus—beta-strain—while also being a carrier of the virus that causes vampirism, Vampyrovirus primus.
He smiles at the gravity of the discovery. “Until today, any host of V. primus would not tolerate any foreign viral infection. Although this is wonderful in most aspects, it does pose challenges to our future. The most promising developments in genetic engineering—the targeting and manipulation of genes within cells—is unavailable to us. V. primus doesn’t differentiate between undesired foreign bodies and desired ones. Past attempts to bypass the virus and its action always yielded the same results: terrible mutations within the cell, complete misalignment of DNA structure, and unavoidable cell death.”
Lars swallows and takes a full breath, mentally preparing for his next declaration. “This is the problem of our kind; it holds us back. It holds us captive in the dark and dependent on constantly consuming blood. With Mithrilin, we will pull back the curtain on this shadow and will finally be able to attack the problem: the complex way V. primus and the human genome conflict.” He nods to himself. “If Mithrilin can prevent the zombie virus from being destroyed in the bloodstream, it can prevent gene-editing lentiviral vectors from being targeted and destroyed as well. I will discover this protein’s secret, and with it, the method to unlock our genetic makeup.”
A shiver runs through him as he considers just how different the world will be after Væir’s attacks—in only a few days. “Væir will cleanse the world of weakness and ignorance, and when we develop the ability to edit our genes, we will be able to make the next evolutionary steps forward. We will usher in a new age...of true perfection.” He smiles at his magnificence, then he stops the recorder. He looks back at the screen. Now how exactly do you work? I’ll start with a full sequence of the aminos, then disable each individually and track the results. It’ll take a while, but I have time.
He chuckles and turns on the recorder again. “I had a powerful realization. I’ve spent my entire life curing my own weaknesses, and now I’ll cure those of the entire world... Even if it requires tearing the Mithrilin super-protein apart and rebuilding it over the course of a century, no cost is too high—no effort too great.”
Kazumi finishes implanting the last group of cells into thin tubes on the coupling device she tasked The Foundry to build last night. While classical music plays in her office, she sets the device into a testing rig so she can finalize her latest version of the hardware description language program she needs to install into the device’s control chip.
The egg-shaped coupler, which is about the size of a coaster, sits beside her monitors. On one of the device’s flat sides is a titanium plate with a ring of gold electronics terminals. In its center is the spindle receiver. On the reverse side, tubes extend out of an epoxy-sealed FPGA circuit board. On the rounded, outside edges of the coupler, a carved, solid titanium shell with reinforcing cross pins protects the assembly, and a ring of nubs and recesses around the entire perimeter will allow clamps to latch on.
It sits suspended from above by the spindle receiver, with an epoxy sealed ring of terminals pressed against the coupler. A wire extends from it to Kazumi’s computer. Facing toward the ground, the tubes of the device—which she just filled with living cells—are immersed in a fluid bath. Wires extend into each tube, collect into a bundle, and travel into another device that’s plugged into her computer.
She updates a line of code in her program, then she runs a debugging program, one last time. She bites her lip while she waits. Almost there! If this works, I’ll surely get a Nobel... Hmm. There may not be Nobels anymore; unless they’re carried over... No, they won’t be. She snickers. Maybe I’ll found an organization and give out Oshiro Awards instead!
The debugger doesn’t find any errors, and with gleaming eyes, she installs the main program to the coupler’s FPGA. When it’s installed, she individually tests each connection and terminal on the device.
In the Fair Oaks Mall’s parking garage in Northern Virginia, Steve returns up the ramp with the old, reddish colored gold ring in his pocket. Lorenzo’s sunglass-wearing henchman, John, waits with his hands at his hips. Li Chen smiles and jumps off the trunk of a sedan he decided to sit on.
“Alright, I got the ring.” Steve holds it up, and John takes a step toward him with his hand extended. “Give it here.”
“Uh-uh. I’ll deal with Lorenzo, and only Lorenzo. He’s the one insisting on the ring, right? I want to join you guys anyway, so let’s go meet him.”
John nods. “Fine. You can deal directly with Mr. Bernardi. Leave your bikes and get in the truck.”
Li Chen, slightly disappointed he isn’t holding a cool fifteen grand in cash, takes only an instant to make up his mind. “Alight. Steve, let’s leave our keys in the bikes. Better somebody cool steal them than some lame company impounding them and selling them at an auction.”
Steve groans. In his earpiece, he hears Madeline. “Just do it, I’ll grab your bike, unless you want to upgrade to Li Chen’s...”
Steve smiles. “Yeah, I love that idea.” His bike is a lot nicer than mine. He walks over and sticks the keys in the ignition. “So, we’ll meet Lorenzo at the airport?”
John motions to the big SUV. “Unless he catches an earlier flight to Italy.”
Crap. “Alright, let’s get moving then.” In his earpiece, he hears Qilin giving instructions. “Jambavan, Madeline, get back to the car. Steve, no matter what you do, stall on giving the ring to Lorenzo... Actually, never give it to him, but make him think you will. You CANNOT give it to him.”
He swallows.
“If you have to go through security, ditch the transmitter in the bathroom. Worse case, we’ll tag back up in Italy.”
Madeline shakes her head. “ITALY? Hold on, nobody said anything about me flying anywhere.”
Beside her, Jambavan sighs. “Qilin, we’re on our way.” He turns off his microphone and grabs Madeline by the arm. “Let’s go, hurry up.”
She yanks her arm free from his grip. “Hey!”
Jambavan spins to her and holds his hand over her mouth. “Shhh.” He frowns and shrugs. “Sorry, if we hurry, we can catch him before he leaves.”
She nods, then turns off her microphone. She notices Jambavan start to jog away. “Wait, what about his bike?”
Jambavan shakes his head. “No time, it’s not a priority, and it can be replaced.”
“Steve’s gonna be pissed…” Madeline starts to jog after him, then she’s reminded she still has some healing, internal injuries. “Ugh… Wait up.” She holds her side and speed walks.
Qilin starts her 1974 Pontiac Trans Am and waits while the absurdly powerful four-hundred-and-fifty-five-cubic-inch Super Duty V8 engine rumbles like a pissed off dragon. “Steve, find out where in Italy you’re going. We can’t lose Lorenzo.” She allows a smile to cross her lips as she plans the drive to the airport. Hope those kids like going ton-up, we gotta haul ass.
Steve climbs into the back of the SUV. “Alright, let’s go to Italy... Hey, what city are we going to?”
John clicks in his seatbelt. “Does it matter?”
Steve clears his throat. “Just curious dude. Jesus, chill out.”
John glances in the rearview mirror and grins. “Florence.”
Through his earpiece, Steve hears Qilin acknowledge the information. “These transmitters only have a short range, so we’ll be out of contact until inside the airport. Good luck.”
Steve exhales and puffs his cheeks out with the air. He stretches his arm over the back of his seat, then he glances behind him to the cargo area. His eyes widen, and he smiles. “Oh, would you look at that. I remember that trunk.”
“Okay, trunk located. Good job, Steve. We’ll be waiting at the airport.”
Li Chen, sitting in the front passenger seat, turns to look. “That bitch was heavy.” He turns around again and takes one last look at his motorcycle. Think it’s time I move on up to an Italian sport bike. Ducati? Aprilia? Bimota? He runs his tongue along his sharpened fangs as his eyes widen. Nah, one more job from fat man, and I can get an MV Agusta!
As Qilin tears onto Route 50, Jambavan frowns, then he sighs. “Qilin, I think we have a problem here. We need to talk.”
She cocks an eyebrow while shifting into second gear and hitting forty miles per hour. “Oh? What’s up?”
“I think you’re losing sight of my mission.”
Qilin sighs.
“Steve located the trunk with the armlets. We don’t need to go Hollywood, as Korina used to say—we don’t need to show off. We can just incapacitate their SUV and take the trunk.”
Madeline nods. “I like that idea.”
Jambavan nods with her. “We can achieve the main goal of the mission, right now. No need to go chasing all around then flying everywhere.”
Qilin glances at Jambavan in the Trans Am’s passenger seat. “Jambavan, you are losing sight of the mission.”
He huffs. “No, I’m—”
“YES, you are. You think we should incapacitate a SUV with Steve inside, which would likely tip off the others that he is working with us, which would put him in danger, and we don’t have any intel on the weapons they may have in the vehicle.”