by Morgan Bell
“What did you find?” Rosen asked him.
“New tech,” Jamie said; the hearing in his right ear was starting to resolve, but his sense of sound direction was gone. “It looks like an entrainment device.”
“You mean the tech lobotomy?” Rosen asked.
“You know about those?” Jamie asked in surprise.
“They were what they were using on troops coming back from the second Crimean war to treat conflict stress disorder,” Rosen said. “Friend of mine had the CSD and they put him on the treatments. Now he’s living in his parents’ basement composing poetry.”
“That doesn’t sound too bad,” Jamie said, examining the panel.
“You haven’t heard his poetry.”
“Thing is the fed practices board got rid of these things and this unit looks…new.”
“This facility closed down five years ago,” Rosen observed.
“I know, but this shouldn’t be here.”
“What’s the hold up?” Blaise asked.
“Dr. Baxter found some tech that shouldn’t be here,” Rosen reported.
“Ok, let’s clear the floor and then we will deal with that,” Blaise said, and moved on.
Jamie continued on point and found no one as they moved through the floor. He continued to find more of the entrainment devices. Finally he came to a medical conference room. He opened the door and immediately resented the bastards who had this. In the healthcare campus he’d been practicing at, the medics had a corner table in the cafeteria available to them between 12:00 and 13:30 two days a week to meet and discuss standards of practice. This room was an entire suite dedicated to the medics. There were reference source panels, case display stations for medics to present complex cases and there was a private kitchen and dining facilities. Jamie wished he could meet one of those medics so he could kick them in the balls.
The stations were shut down. The kitchen was mothballed. But it was all clear to him what this had been. Then he saw something flashing on one of the conference tables. A black tablet with the word CRONUS flashing on it.
“Is it clear?” Blaise called in after him.
“I found active tech,” Jamie called back.
“Technosis?” Blaise asked.
“Don’t know. Tablet is active, and the word ‘CRONUS’ is flashing on it,” Jamie said.
“Do you need any help?” Rosen asked.
“No, I’ll handle it.”
“Before you do that, kick your weapon out here,” Blaise said.
“Why?”
“Baxter, you may be resistant to the Kensington virus but we don’t know if that crosses over to KVB.”
Jamie hesitated.
“Rule one,” Rosen called in.
“Fine,” Jamie said, and set his weapon on the floor, safety on. Then he kicked it across the floor to the doorway, where Rosen retrieved it.
“Ok, go ahead now,” Blaise told him.
Jamie activated the tablet.
CHAPTER 14
PROJECT CRONUS
“Baxter? Baxter? You all right?” Blaise called in after a few minutes.
Jamie said nothing.
“Baxter, are you a frothing at the mouth, angry text messaging tech zombie?” Rosen asked.
The silence continued. Blaise looked at Rosen and signaled that he would go in high and Rosen would go in low.
“I’m angry,” they heard Jamie mutter. “But I’m not a tech zombie.”
“What is it?” Blaise asked.
“It’s reports; reports about patients from here,” Jamie replied. “It’s also surveillance reports on us going back to the Cyber Warfare Base. Someone in our group was recording…I can see me, I can see Drake, I can see Ganos.”
Blaise stepped into the room. “What is it?”
“All the recordings. All of the reports. Everyone is in here. Except Marshall,” Jamie said.
“We’ve got to get back to Fenwick,” Blaise urged.
“Not before we grab one of those entrainment units.”
∞
Jamie sat quietly in the back of the Mustang, reviewing the tablet. The reports continued on and on. Forty subjects, all tech terrorists, all taken into the facility, and all treated with entrainment units. Then there were the videos from the Cyber Warfare Base in Fort Meade, Maryland. The files. The five files. As Jamie watched it again and again he realized he was watching Marshall gently guide them to those files, the five files. When he looked through the 40 on the tablet he tried to guess which of the 40 had been the five they were looking for. He read through medic notes. Patients with tech violent tendencies and genius or near genius levels of tech skills. The notes talked about the precipitous drop off in tech skills following the entrainment sessions. They talked about the preferred ability for the preservation of tech skills for project Cronus.
“What are you finding?” Rosen asked.
“This was a federal corporate project,” Jamie said. “They were trying to retain higher functions while controlling the antisocial behavior. They were trying to make killers docile geniuses so that they could work on a project. Project Cronus.”
“Any idea what that is?” Rosen asked.
Blaise was too distracted by concerns about what had happened to Fenwick to care about what Jamie was discovering.
“Cranial Retro Opthalmic Neurological User System,” Jamie replied. “It sounds like some sort of visual entrainment system for programming the brain directly through the eyes. There are all sorts of notes on wavelength frequency, kilohertz transmission signals, data transfer and repeat message propagation requirements. There are about a dozen patents in here for hemispheric brain synchronization and limbic bypass and selective engagement codes.”
“So they were test subjects?” Rosen asked.
Jamie shook his head. “Some of them might have been. But it seems most of them, or at least the ones they were really interested in, were the ones they needed to deliver or develop code for the system.”
“What happened to all of them?”
Jamie read on. “The Cronus notes talk about ‘feedback failure’ and ‘infiltrative brain trauma.’ There are a number of post mortems here where they tested tissue samples. Dendrite death in upper regions of the brain. Preservation of the motor function. Segmental preservation in the cross fibers and discrete function of the brainstem. The patients were experiencing a sort of functional brain death.”
“That sounds like the KV,” Rosen said.
“Except these were all done using visual entrainment with tech. People strapped to beds, goggles, repeated visual series.”
“So someone cracked the code,” Blaise suggested.
“What?” Jamie asked.
“Someone figured out how to deliver it another way. The texts, the social media, the hate messages,” Blaise explained. “Who worked on the project?”
Jamie read through a few more reports. “Dr. Tobias Wickham, Dr. Stephen Locum and Dr. Fritz Gottfried…”
“What is it?” Rosen asked.
“Wickham and Locum were the two doctors that ran the rage ward on the Health Campus and Dr. Gottfried was the doctor that treated me when I was passing through Cyber base to be sent out on assignment,” Jamie said, setting down the tablet.
No one spoke. They had arrived at the home and the Kennedy limo was gone.
Blaise was first in the door, followed by Drake and then Rosen. Agent Ganos stood outside waiting, weapon drawn.
Blaise found Fenwick motionless, his head in a pool of blood. He checked for the carotid pulse. It was strong. Fenwick was breathing deeply.
“He’s got a bad gash and a lump the size of an ostrich egg at the base of his skull. Get Baxter in here,” Blaise reported.
Agent Ganos ushered Jamie into the house and soon he was bandaging the injured officer. “How long do you think he’s been out?” Blaise asked.
“No idea,” Jamie answered. “But he’s lost about a liter of blood. Scalp wounds bleed a lot.”
“You can’t
guess?” Blaise demanded.
“I’ll just get out a chart on rate of bleeding from a scalp wounds, punch in a liter and give you a magic number, shall I?” Jamie asked.
“Just give me a fucking guess.”
“A fucking guess would be forty-five minutes.”
Jamie started doing a neurological assessment, checking pupillary reflexes and ignoring everyone around him. Fenwick began to stir.
“Hey, sleepy head, wakey wakey!” Blaise said.
“Leave him alone,” Jamie told him. “How many fingers are you seeing?”
“Two on each hand.” Fenwick replied.
“Do you know what happened?” Blaise asked him.
“Follow my finger with just your eyes,” Jamie said.
“One minute I’m trying to shut down tech antipersonnel devices on the fifth floor of the hospital and get a no fly zone set by fed and municipal. Next thing the world went all black and…ow,” Fenwick winced, touching the bandage at the base of his skull.
“We need to glue that shut,” Jamie advised.
“Damn, that hurts like a mother -”
“Marshall was a mole,” Blaise informed Fenwick.
“Captain, that information would have been most beneficial before I got slugged in the back of the head,” Fenwick groaned, trying to get up.
“Don’t move,” Jamie told him. “We got no tech and minimal first aid. Before you go anywhere we’ve got to glue your scalp and make sure you are clear.”
“I’ll look for some glue,” Drake offered, and went into the kitchen.
“Doc, not to be mean, especially since there are two of you, but you don’t look too good yourself,” Fenwick observed.
Jamie reached up to the side of his face and felt the dry blood that had been dribbling from his ear since the door blew off the hinges on the third floor. “I’ll be fine. I’ve got a punctured eardrum is all.”
“If you say so, Doc. Just stop spinning so we can talk a while,” Fenwick said, lying back down on the floor.
“Stay awake, Fenwick,” Jamie advised.
“Just need to rest,” Fenwick pleaded.
“No, you don’t,” Jamie insisted, and started tapping Fenwick’s cheeks.
“Why can’t he just rest?” Blaise asked.
“Because he might not wake up.”
“I found a tube of clear glue,” Drake informed him.
“Perfect.” Jamie took the tube and rolled the officer to his side.
Removing the bandage caused the staunched blood to begin to flow again. Jamie wiped dry the lip of the torn flesh, applied the glue along its length and pressed it into place. “This might sting a bit,” he said, after he had started applying the pressure.
Fenwick swore and no longer wanted to go to sleep. The burning in his scalp cleared his head and he looked at Jamie with an animal hatred in his eyes.
“Give it another ten minutes to set,” Jamie advised, and got up to go wash the blood off his hands.
“How are you feeling?” Blaise asked, helping Fenwick to his feet.
“Like I’ve got a dozen wasps stinging the base of my head,” Fenwick complained.
“Do you think you can work your magic?” Blaise asked.
“I’ll try,” Fenwick said, and sat down at the data panel.
For several seconds the screen continued to show the word Cronus. Then an image appeared. It was Lieutenant Marshall. “By now you will have the Cronus files and you will also know that I was part of the Cronus test groups. This is being given to you so that you may know the reason for today’s actions. You are being sent to hunt me and my fellow patriots down for one reason. We pushed the button first. Everything that you have witnessed and everything that you will see, is the result of the intended designs of our federal government and their corporate partners. They have made the world a nightmare. We have made it a more vivid one. I won’t pretend that we have any demands you could even hope to meet or any ultimatums that will stop us from our appointed purpose. None of us are saints. All of us are serial tech killers, but we have, until now, been minor league compared to our government. We will, in the fullness of time, equal the outrages our government has perpetrated on its citizens and then, then we will dare to exceed them.”
“Among your leaders there are those who know us intimately. They are those who took our simple skills and trained them to a greater level. They are those who attempted to place us in harness to their purposes so that we might be one of the meat puppets and sheeple that populate this planet.”
“Dr. Baxter, you’ve been interesting, but like the general, I must concur. There is nothing special about you; you are simply a one off anomaly. Unlike us, you possess no specific genius to coincide with your ‘immunity’ and therefore are no longer of any use to us. When we meet again you will die because, like the other 40 subjects, you are expendable, and as Dr. Gottfried so eloquently put it, ‘contributing no material advantage toward our objectives and purpose.’”
“Fenwick, sorry I had to bash and go. You are a talented hacker and cyber warrior. But you’re not in our league.”
The image stopped. The word Cronus flashed on the screen and the panel began to smoke.
“Everyone out!” Blaise yelled, and the data panel caught fire.
There was no bang, or pop. There was instead the slow, steady flames as wire heated behind walls and the Federal Reserve Foreclosed unit slowly, steadily burned, where no monitors would report it, no services would come to put it out and where no neighbor would bother to say a thing about it.
“What now?” Agent Ganos asked.
“Regroup,” Blaise replied. “We still have a mission. We are here to stop the KVBs. We now know the face of one of the enemy, and we’ve injured another. Assuming there was any truth to what Marshall said, that only leaves three others.”
“I need to get my hands on some tech,” Fenwick said.
“We can break into another house,” Drake offered.
“No, I want a trunk access.”
“You think that corridor is still blacked out?” Blaise asked.
“I don’t see what not. At this point they will have to be far away from the area. I figure they are setting up operations downtown.”
“Then let’s make our way to Pontiac and take a run to the mall.”
CHAPTER 15
PEOPLE’S NAFTA FRIENDSHIP PLAZA
Pontiac, like the rest of reincorporated Michigan, had changed from the ground war and the occupation. The silver field, where the Silverdome once had stood, had served as a homeless shelter where FEMA trailers and tents had set side by side. Later the trailers were sold off and dragged up north to serve as deer camps and homes in rural Michigan. The tents were stolen or sold, and the ground, with its rows of power, tech and utility hookups, made Silver Field look like an abandoned drive in theater. Jamie watched the passing landscape and was appalled.
“How do people live like this?” he asked.
“You travel much, Baxter?” Blaise countered.
“Only since getting swept up in this crap,” Jamie replied.
“As bad as this may look to you, this is pretty damn civil compared to other places, and I’m talking just in the U.S. If you add into it the places where we go to kill other people, this is damn near palatial living. You got your own shitter, your own kitchen, your own tech and your own cot. That’s a hell of a lot.”
“But this country was once…”
“Once is the operative word. You take a look out there and you see gray and devastation. I can tell you there are a lot of soldiers, officers even, who come back, and this is their dream, and just about what they can afford on a retirement and a part-time job,” Blaise said.
“I’m not judging,” Jamie muttered.
“Of course you are. We all do. We judge between ourselves and others. We judge all day long. It’s how we make rational decisions. But what I need from you, right this minute, is some information that I can make judgments by.”
“What type
of information?” Jamie asked.
“Something only a doctor could understand or find,” Blaise said.
Jamie reviewed the Cronus files. There were interviews and recordings. There were session notes and lab notes. The medical side was fully documented, in excruciating detail, from daily bowel movements, to mentation issues, to identifiable neurological symptoms. There were the administrative reports, and they were the sort of reports Mr. Tracy so loved to go over with the medics. Cost analysis that described the line item operational expenses of the research being conducted, the reconciliation reports and the budgeting submission analysis. There were the federal worker compensation reports; sick days, holidays, personal days and incident days, and Jamie noticed something. Four full benefit submissions for med techs through their union. These were large line items. They were the hazardous duty pay associated with med techs that died working in communicable disease centers. These were the payouts where families got credits, but no body to have processed, and there were two facility expense submissions and an incident report.
The incident report was a very dry report describing a fatality among the med techs involving a tech failure. The facility expenses were for two isolation units. There was an addendum and a reference to a report. The report was issued by Dr. Gottfried and was coded and sealed.
“Fenwick, how are you doing?” Jamie asked.
“I’m seeing clear and my head hurts. Is that good?” Fenwick asked..
“I don’t know. If I give you this tablet do you think you could hack a security password so I can see a report?”
“Pass it on up.” Fenwick fiddled with the tablet, then passed it back to Jamie. “That should do it.”
“Thanks,” Jamie said, and opened the attachment.
The attachment was a recorded interview. It was of a young man smiling and sitting very still.
“The med tech. What happened to him?” Dr. Gottfried asked.