Callsign: King ctm-1

by Sean Ellis

  “You protected yourself.”

  She shook her head, and then hugged her arms around her torso as if fighting back a wave of nausea. “I thought that it was something that happened to all of us when we found the remains in the cave…that we were all changed by what we had discovered…but that’s not…it was me. I did this to them. I destroyed their minds.” She looked into King’s eyes again. “I can’t control this.”

  “Yes you can.” He put every ounce of certainty he could muster into his tone, but deep down he wasn’t sure at all. “You didn’t change me. You were being hurt and you fought back. That’s all. You have to believe that.”

  He could tell that his words failed to convince her, but it was a start.

  “We should get out of here,” he said, rising to his feet. “You have some answers now; you know what happened. There’s nothing more for you here.”

  She considered this for a moment, her eyes still fixed on the semi-circle of motionless zombies, then gave a weak nod. As if responding to the gesture, the group abruptly turned and filed back into the cave.

  Relieved, King finally turned his attention to the ropes that bound his wrists. The knots were pulled tight, but appeared to be fairly simple. He tugged them loose with his teeth, and in a matter of seconds, was able to wriggle free. He then helped Felice to her feet and together they moved toward the parked vehicles.

  Moses was waiting for them, his hands spread in a gesture of contrition. “Please,” he said, as if to forestall an act of retribution. “I never meant for that to happen. You were not to be harmed.”

  King wasn’t sure how to respond, but to his surprise, Felice spoke first. “I believe you. And I understand why you felt you had to do this. I wish you had told us what you wanted in the first place. It would have prevented all of this from happening.”

  Moses was as speechless as King.

  “The cave is dangerous,” Felice continued. “I know you believe that it represents a source of wealth for the future of Africa, but it’s not safe. You must see that.”

  He nodded dumbly.

  She held out a hand to him. “I haven’t forgotten that you rescued me once. I remember it all now. Let me return the favor.”

  Almost tentatively, the young Ethiopian took the proffered hand. King kept his expression neutral, doing his best to hide his reservations. He doubted that they had anything more to worry about from Moses, but a betrayal was nonetheless a betrayal. And there was no telling how far the ripples of that action would spread.

  As if to underscore what he was thinking, the unmistakable sound of helicopter turbines-distant but nevertheless growing closer-became audible. King scanned the horizon in all directions and quickly located two sets of green and red aircraft lights approaching from the east.

  It was of course highly unlikely that the helicopters belonged to the Pan African Army of Freedom, or any other ragtag rebel group, but that was of little comfort to King. As far as he knew, there was only one other group that knew the location of the cavern: Felice’s former employers at Nexus/Manifold.

  For the first time since getting free of his bonds, it occurred to King that he had not armed himself. He had no idea what had become of his MP5. The bodies of the three rebel fighters, and the AK-47s they had wielded, lay some fifty meters away. The Dragunov rifle was presumably still in its case in the SUV, but there almost certainly wasn’t enough time to break it out and assemble it before the helicopters arrived. Even the attempt might provoke a hostile response; it was a sure bet that they were already under scrutiny from observers in the aircraft.

  “Change of plans,” King declared. “Back to the cave.”

  Felice was visibly shocked at the suggestion. “What?”

  “No time to explain.” He took her hand and began striding purposefully across the open area toward the mouth of the cave.

  It was already too late. One of the craft swooped down between them and their destination, flaring its rotors and buffeting them with a blast of artificial wind. King held up a hand, partly to deflect some of the grit that was blasting into his face, and partly to shade his eyes from the high intensity spotlight that stabbed out from the helicopter, transfixing him and Felice like bugs on a pin. The message was crystal clear: stay put. There didn’t seem to be any alternative.

  But then, as the turbines were shut down, returning the night once more to silence, King heard a familiar voice reach out from the center of the blazing light. “Jack? Is that really you?”

  19.

  It was difficult to say who was more surprised at the reunion. Sara rushed forward, and in an uncharacteristic display of emotion, wrapped her arms around King. She felt cold to the touch and her kiss tasted faintly of salt, but he welcomed it nonetheless. Days of uncertainty about her fate had been swept aside, and all the questions about what had happened seemed completely unimportant.

  When he at last drew back from her embrace, he got a look at her traveling companions, most of whom had deployed in a defensive perimeter around the two helicopters. They all, Sara included, wore dark fatigues, but aside from Sara, only one man was not openly wielding some kind of weapon. That lone hold-out was a handsome dark-haired man, who seemed to be waiting for Sara to make an introduction.

  “So you must be the friend that Sara told me about,” he intoned. “Jack, is it? I’m Max Fulbright.”

  King nodded, and cast an inquisitive glance in Sara’s direction. Her expression told him that she had volunteered only the barest minimum of information about him. “That’s right. Generally speaking, Sara and I try not to interfere in each other’s work, but sometimes there’s a bit of overlap.”

  “This time there’s a lot,” Sara said. “Manifold Genetics is involved, Jack. And you’ll never guess what they’ve been up to.”

  “Actually, I might.” King beckoned Felice forward. “I don’t know if you got a chance to meet her back in Addis, but this is Felice Carter.”

  Sara did a double-take as she recognized the geneticist. “Last time I saw you…” She left the sentiment hanging as something else dawned in her eyes. “Jack, she could be infected.”

  King shook his head. “It’s much worse than that.”

  He gave a quick synopsis of everything that had happened from the moment he rescued Felice from the burning hospital room, up to their arrival at the cavern. Felice seemed visibly pained by what he was saying, but the information was too important for him to sugar-coat anything. When he was done, Sara turned to Felice.

  “I’ve been to the Manifold lab where they were trying to exploit what you found, and I’ve seen their research. They want to isolate the contagion that causes this…” She turned back to King, “zombie state. It’s the key to all of this, and she may have it in her.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple,” King countered. “There’s something else at work here.” He glanced at Felice, then took Sara aside and in a low voice, described what had happened when the rebels had tried to assault Felice. “She changed him,” he explained. “Just like that. One second he was attacking her, and the next, he was a mindless drone. That wasn’t the result of exposure to a contagion.”

  Although he hadn’t been invited into the conversation, Fulbright spoke up. “Are you saying that she’s doing it…changing people with some kind of supernatural power?”

  King glanced at Sara, curious to see her reaction to that suggestion. “I don’t know what the mechanism is, but I know what I saw.”

  “Then we’ve got to keep her safe,” Fulbright declared. “I’ll arrange for transport to a secure facility.”

  As Fulbright moved to the nearest helicopter, King turned back to Sara. “Who is that guy?”

  “I think he’s CIA.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  She shrugged. “You know how spooks can be. But he arranged the takedown of a Manifold lab. He’s trying to get out in front of whatever they’ve got planned.”

  “I don’t trust him.”

  Sara playfully pu
nched his shoulder. “Jack, are you jealous?”

  He offered a half-hearted grin. “Guilty as charged. But seriously, this is some bad shit. I don’t trust anyone right now, least of all the Company.”

  “I don’t know if we have any other options right now. If what you say is true-if she’s not in control of this…this ability-then we’ve got to keep her under wraps.”

  Sara took a breath then continued. “I don’t buy into this idea of psychic power, but there are any number of other ways this might have happened. The research we took from the Manifold lab indicates that the virus they discovered here might have been responsible for the genetic mutation that led to the rise of human consciousness hundreds of thousands of years ago. They thought a second exposure to the virus might switch that gene off, essentially reversing that evolutionary leap. But maybe the trigger is something else. A pheromone that she releases when threatened. Just imagine how that could be used as a weapon. We’ve got to isolate exactly what that trigger is so we can come up with a way to stop it, and if we’re lucky, reverse the process.”

  “She’s not a lab rat, Sara.”

  Something dark and angry flashed in Sara’s eyes. “No. She’s patient zero for an outbreak that just might wipe out humanity, and that’s exactly how I have to think of her. You of all people should know that sometimes saving the world requires sacrifices. Hope and good vibrations aren’t going to save us from this, Jack. Let me do my job.”

  Before King could respond, Fulbright returned. “It’s all arranged. Miss Carter, if you could just come with me.”

  Felice lurched into motion as if the events of the past few days and recognition of her own role in those events had, at long last, deprived her entirely of volition. She moved, almost like one of the zombies, toward the waiting helicopter. As she stepped past Fulbright, he grasped her biceps with one hand.

  Felice let out a cry of surprise and pulled away, clapping a hand to her arm where he had touched her. King caught a glimpse of a hypodermic syringe in the man’s hand.

  Fulbright stepped back hastily, raising both hands. “Just something to make sure she doesn’t change all of us into zombies.”

  “That’s completely unnecessary,” Sara accused. “You should have asked me first.”

  “My apologies, Dr. Fogg, but you’re not calling the shots any more.” Fulbright lowered his hands, letting the syringe fall, and then stepped forward to catch Felice as the sedative he had administered went to work.

  Moses suddenly jumped forward, breaking his long silence, and tried to wrestle Felice’s limp form away, but Fulbright shoved him back with his free hand, and then in the same motion drew a pistol and pointed it at the young Ethiopian. Moses raised his hands in a show of surrender, but the gesture evidently made no impression on Fulbright.

  He calmly pulled the trigger, and shot Moses between the eyes.

  20.

  Sara gasped as the small pistol roared and the young Ethiopian man’s head snapped back. Right up to that moment, things had more or less made sense, and even now, her brain tried to wrestle with what she had just witnessed, to figure out how it fit with everything else.

  But it just didn’t. Fulbright had murdered someone in cold blood, and now his gun was swinging toward Sigler. In the corner of her eye, she saw the other members of Fulbright’s assault team shoulder their weapons, likewise taking aim at her boyfriend.

  Sigler was already moving. Maybe his stated distrust of Fulbright had given him just enough of an edge to act decisively when the betrayal occurred. Sara saw him zigzagging across the open area, and then the world seemed to explode in a haze of noise and sulfur smoke. She couldn’t tell if Sigler had been hit, and before she could find him again, one of the commandos grabbed her by the shoulder and propelled her toward the helicopter. Fulbright was already stuffing the unconscious Felice into one of the rear seats.

  He looked at Sara as he buckled Felice’s safety harness over her torso. “Sit down and shut up, Dr. Fogg. You’ve got important work to do, and I hope for your sake that you’ll be cooperative. I will get what I want either way; it’s just a question of how hard you want to make it for yourself.”

  Still reeling from the violence and treachery, Sara complied without really even knowing what she was doing.

  Fulbright leaned out and addressed the commando. “Did you get him?”

  The man shook his head. “Might have wounded him, but he made it to that cave.”

  “Keep a team here and make sure he’s dead.”

  A pang shot through Sara’s heart at the pronouncement. Fulbright reached back tapped the pilot’s shoulder, signaling him to start the engines, and then he settled into his own seat and buckled in. She had to understand what she had just witnessed. It was the only way to keep the despair at bay, to keep from thinking about what she had just witnessed, and… Jack!

  “Who the hell are you?” she demanded, shouting to be heard over the whine of the turbine.

  He stared at her, a hint of his roguish smile returning. He reached forward and settled a headset over her ears. The cushioned earphones dramatically reduced the engine noise. Fulbright donned a set as well.

  “That’s better.” His expression was sardonic, but somehow the electronic amplification of the intercom failed to convey it in his tone. “Who am I? I told you my name. There’s really not much more to tell.”

  “You’re not CIA, are you?”

  He laughed. “I never said I was, though in point of fact, I am a field officer with the Company. But it just so happens that…” He glanced at the ceiling as if searching for the right word. “You might say I’m moonlighting. But I’m not going to talk about that.”

  There was a lurch as the helicopter lifted off. Sara felt her stomach drop as the pilot tilted the aircraft forward and swooped away, but she fought back the waves of nausea. “You said I should cooperate. That works both ways.”

  He crossed his arms. “Believe it or not, I haven’t told you anything that isn’t true. My employer knew what Manifold was trying to do, and wanted to develop a cure or a vaccine; something to permanently remove that threat. As my employer might say, you have the highest probability of finding that cure.”

  “Your employer, would that be the Russians? The Chinese? No, I’m sure you’re a patriot; you’d never do that. A rival genetics firm, then? I won’t help you turn this thing into a bioweapon, no matter how much you torture me.”

  Fulbright laughed. “I don’t think my employer is interested in developing bioweapons. There’s no profit in it.”

  “So it is just about money?”

  “It’s always just about money.” He regarded her across the dimly lit interior, as if weighing how much more to reveal. “Let me tell you how the world really works.

  “Nations, armies, governments…they don’t mean anything anymore. They don’t have any power anymore. Everything is controlled by corporations. And unlike governments and armies, corporations don’t make decisions based on whims or idealistic beliefs or petty revenge. They are motivated by just one thing; the need to keep growing. They are, in a very real sense, a higher life form. The individual shareholders might be governed by those petty human concerns, but that all gets lost in the collective decision making process. They are like brain cells, and in the end, no matter what the individuals may think or believe, the corporation is driven by the singular desire to make a profit. It’s a paragon of efficiency.

  “I called it a life form; I wasn’t joking about that. You see, something happened a couple decades ago. No one really knows all the details, but the working theory is that the quest for greater efficiency led to the creation of a vast computer network called Brainstorm.”

  “You expect me to believe that a computer is running the world?” Sara scoffed. “That’s pure science fiction.”

  “It’s not as simple as that. You see, the computer doesn’t make decisions. It just supplies probability assessments to the corporations in the network.

  “It’s like
using a computer to help you play a game of chess. The computer analyzes the board and then gives you the moves that are most likely to result in victory. You want to win, so you do what the computer suggests. To do otherwise would be patently foolish. And after a while, you realize that you’re the redundant part of the process. You’re just an appendage of the machine, moving the pieces while it does the thinking. But it’s always right, so why would you do anything else?

  “The Brainstorm network kept making the right decisions, and kept growing and growing, gaining a majority stake in the world’s biggest corporations and institutions, and they in turn profited immensely.

  “But these corporations need stability. Things like war and terrorism are disruptive; the quaint notion of a military industrial complex and war profiteering…that’s an obsolete paradigm. Brainstorm wants to keep things peaceful. That’s why it pays people like me an obscene amount of money to make sure that nothing upsets the apple cart.”

  Sara shook her head, incredulous. “This is all true?”

  “The Brainstorm network exists. A lot of the rest is just supposition, but based on the communications I’ve received, I don’t think it’s a stretch to believe that there’s an artificial intelligence running the show.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you?”

  Fulbright shrugged. “I get paid very well. And besides, it’s making all the right decisions. Like I said, we need stability in this world. Believe it or not, I’m one of the good guys.”

  “You’re a psychopath.”

  “If you say so.” The roguish smile hardened, and Fulbright keyed the switch that patched his headset in to the external radio. “Please tell me Sigler is finally dead.”

  21.

  Noise and dust enveloped King as bullets split the air around him, striking the ground directly in his path or zinging harmlessly into the sky. A red tracer round occasionally flashed past, like a laser bolt from a science fiction movie weapon. It seemed impossible that none of the shots had yet found him, and he figured it was only a matter of time before that changed. But he was still alive, still on his feet, and still moving, and as long as he had that, there was still hope.