The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series)

by Tracy Serpa

  “I don’t want to hurt any of you, especially since you’ve been so kind to me. And if there was another way, I sure would take it.”

  “We’ll take you with us,” Kai said, trying to keep the panic out of his voice.

  He imagined that sad, grimacing smile crossing Ben’s face.

  “I’m sorry, but that’s not going to work. There’s something going on in that part of town, something worse than looters. A neighbor told Bonnie all of Pearl City was getting locked down and that people were rioting down toward Hilu and Ninilani; that’s right near the station. A few hours ago, the emergency broadcast stopped saying that people should head for their nearest evacuation center and just started saying to stay in your home. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m not hurrying toward trouble, and I’m not going to sit and wait for it to find me.”

  “Please, Ben—”

  “I’m sorry, son,” the old man cut in. “Put your keys on the ground and slide them out here. I don’t want to have to hurt your friends.”

  The sound of feet moving and a sudden struggle made Kai jump; he ran forward to the door just in time to see Ben swing the butt of his shotgun around and crack Paul across the temple. His brother crumpled to the floor, the tire iron clattering to the ground next to him.

  “No!” Kai cried.

  Immediately, Ben shoved the tire iron toward the back of the room with his wounded leg, letting out a low groan as he moved. Next to him, Bonnie stood as still as stone, her mouth a gaping “O” of surprise and fear. Her husband swung the muzzle of the shotgun back around and pointed it straight at Kai, who had started to move toward his brother. To his left, Jones had leaped to his feet as well.

  “Stop,” the older man commanded. “Give me the keys, and we’ll be on our way.”

  Kai couldn’t take his eyes off his brother.

  “He’ll be okay,” Ben insisted. Kai could hear the irritation building in his tone; he was scared, and he was also a father and a husband who would do what was necessary to protect his family. But Kai was still frozen, rooted to the ground, unable or unwilling to give up the truck.

  “Sarah,” he whispered, looking up at Ben. “How am I going to get my sister? She’s just a kid.”

  He was momentarily hopeful as the hardness melted out of Ben’s eyes and his grip on the shotgun loosened. The older man opened his mouth once, as if he was going to offer a solution . . . then closed it again, his lips hardening into a grim line. He gestured toward the ground with the muzzle and said quietly, “Your keys.”

  Finally, his arms like deadweights, Kai fished into his pocket for the truck keys.

  “Slowly,” Ben insisted.

  Kai pulled the keys gingerly from his pocket and set them on the floor. They slid easily across the tile to stop near Ben’s feet.

  “Grab those, Bonnie,” he said. When his wife stood up with the truck keys in her hand, she glanced briefly at Kai. He could see that she was ashamed, but she was more afraid than anything.

  “Now step into the storeroom.” He gestured at Kai.

  “My brother?”

  “I’ll leave the building keys on him. When he comes to, he can let you out.”

  Once Jones and Kai had moved slowly into the small windowless room, Ben limped forward and closed the door. The lock clicked into place a second later, and they were in utter darkness.

  Ben’s voice was muffled by the metal door as he said, “I’m sorry, Kai. I am. But you boys will be fine. Take what you need from the store.”

  Kai scoffed; frustration and concern for his brother, embarrassment, and the ever-present anger swam together in his gut. In a sudden act of rage, he swiped at the nearest shelf and knocked the boxes to the floor. He could hear Jones breathing loudly from the other side of the room. After a moment, they faintly heard the truck engine roaring to life, the sound dying away as Ben and his family headed for whatever safety they imagined lay elsewhere. When everything was quiet again, Kai put his ear to the door, listening for Paul to regain consciousness.

  They sat in the dark and quiet for what felt like hours without speaking. Kai thought Jones might have fallen asleep, until he suddenly spoke up.

  “Do you hear that?” he whispered furtively.

  Kai focused on the room outside the door and answered, “No. What?”

  “From outside. You don’t hear that? It sounds like . . . like coyotes.”

  Sixteen

  “We need to accept the possibility that this is already bigger than we can handle.”

  They had been sitting at the table passing around pizza and theories for more than three hours. Gary spent the first hour or so listening intently and chiming in, but his questions and suggestions were quickly met with masked looks of irritation, and soon after almost completely ignored. He realized that the group had a certain dynamic that worked for them, a meter and rhyme that he knocked out of balance. Sore, grumpy, and concerned for his family, he had moved to the back of the room, where a twin-size bed was stationed, and lay down. He dozed fitfully for a while, but found it impossible to relax. So he lay in the bed with his eyes closed, listening as Josie and the others continued working toward their unknown goal.

  It was Reggie who first suggested that they might be out of their depth, and the room was momentarily quiet.

  “Even if it’s the whole of the island, at least it’s contained.” Josie finally spoke up.

  “We assume,” countered Reggie. “And think about how many people we’re talking about. We know the trial sampled three hundred people, right?”

  “Three hundred seven,” Tab corrected.

  “Right. So in the animal trials, when the nanites lived past the expiration date, how quickly did they overrun the nervous system?” Papers shuffled, and Gary imagined Reggie starting to scribble down figures.

  Josie answered, “Less than twenty-four hours after the expiration date, we saw the first violent events. Within thirty-six, all the affected animals showed signs of extreme aggression, confusion, loss of motor skills, and the periods of limited consciousness.”

  “Okay, so we’re well within that window at this point. You said only a certain percentage were affected, right?”

  “Yeah, about thirty percent of them.”

  “Right, so thirty percent of . . .” Reggie trailed off as he did the math. “We’re looking at ninety people potentially.”

  Gary heard Josie make a sound of hesitation, then say, “We have no idea, though. I mean, there’s every chance that the nanites will react differently in humans. I think it’s likely we’ll have a higher percentage of human test subjects who experience a programming breach.”

  “Well, we’re doing best case here,” Reggie said. “So let’s stick with ninety. How are we assuming this can spread?”

  “Animal autopsy showed nanites present in the blood, saliva, and stool.”

  Reggie chuckled.

  “Gross. Leaving that last one out, we’re looking at violent attacks, right? Bites, bloodied knuckles, what have you. So, let’s say each one of the breached subjects manages to get their hands on two people in the space of an hour. It might be more, it might be less . . . I mean, do we know why the attacks occur? What drives them?”

  Gary rolled quietly onto his side and watched the group through half-closed eyes; no one took much notice of him. Tab was sitting with her feet up on a chair, picking at her nails. Reggie was, as Gary had suspected, bent over the table, making notes on the back of a pizza box. To his left, Josie was sitting forward in her chair, her elbows on her knees, her forehead resting in her hands.

  “They kicked me out of the lab before I really had a chance to do any kind of follow-up research,” she mumbled. “And obviously the animals have been destroyed.”

  “Do you have a theory?” Reggie pressed.

  “Well . . . sure. My theory is that the nanites run out of meds in the thirty-day period, but during that time, they form some kind of symbiotic relationship with the nervous system that we didn’t anticipate.
And somehow, their programming adapts to that relationship . . . that’s part of what keeps them functioning. The objective of continuing to regulate the system overrides the programmed objective of expiration. Which means all the rest of the programming gets expunged, and they’re essentially free agents.”

  The room was so silent Gary felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. When he couldn’t take the quiet any longer, he spoke up, asking, “What does that mean?”

  Josie looked up in surprise at his voice. The swelling around her eyes had worsened, and the bruises were much darker than he remembered. Before she could speak, Tab swung her feet down off the chair and turned to face Gary.

  “It means the nanotechnology is autonomous; it controls itself. There are no programming safeguards, no processes that we can assume or identify. And from the looks of things, it’s also . . . interfering with the test subjects’ nervous systems,” she responded. He hadn’t heard her speak much since meeting her, and he realized for the first time how unpleasant her voice was. She sounded like a smoker, and everything she said rang slightly false, like she functioned in a perpetual state of sarcasm.

  As she was speaking, Gary pushed himself up to sit on the edge of the bed. His arms ached from the effort, and he discovered the stiffness in his neck had worsened to the point of near immobility. He winced, and Josie gestured to Tab to stop.

  “What? It’s the truth, and he clearly wants to know,” she snapped back.

  Josie glared at her before putting her head back in her hands.

  “Without the programming, they’re free to reproduce at will, and the system is essentially deciding by what means it will continue to medicate the test subject,” Tab continued. “We don’t know what they’re using to build new nanites; we just know they’re doing it. We don’t know how they’re controlling the host system; we just know that they are. And we assume that the objective is tied to the new behavior the subjects are exhibiting—the aggression primarily.”

  Reggie put his pencil down and cleared his throat.

  “Anyone know the population of the island?” he asked.

  Tab pulled out her iPhone and tapped a few buttons.

  “Estimated at nine hundred fifty-three thousand two hundred seven,” she answered a few moments later.

  Reggie let a long, slow breath out through pursed lips and put his hands on top of his head.

  “What?” Gary asked.

  It took a moment for Reggie to gather himself.

  “If we assume that the nanites initially breached in ninety test subjects and that they can spread the tech to others via blood and saliva during violent attacks, which we assume might occur two times per hour . . . ” He paused, pursing his lips. “Do we have any idea how quickly a new subject might be overrun?”

  After taking a deep breath, Josie settled back into her chair and said, “I only saw one test animal get bitten. The change was . . . rapid. Less than half an hour.”

  Reggie scribbled a note on the side of the pizza box, then went back to calculating. Moments later, he set his pen down gently and said in a quiet voice, “We’re looking at three hundred sixty-eight thousand six hundred forty people infected with breached nanotech at twelve hours past zero hour. If that rate continues, the entire island is gone within sixteen hours.”

  Even Tab gaped as Reggie read off the numbers. It seemed impossible.

  Finally, Hammond spoke up for the first time in hours.

  “There are a lot of assumptions in there,” he commented. “This is assuming a steady rate of attack and infection, which is unlikely. At a certain point, people will hide, fortify their locations, and defend themselves.”

  “But how long before that happens?” Reggie countered. “With the island dark, there’s no news outlets, no information being passed. Residents are going to be left to figure it out for themselves. I’d be willing to bet at least a third of the population is overrun before anyone starts considering fighting back. I mean, we know what’s happening, and we’re having a hard time processing it. I doubt anyone not in the know is going to assume it’s doomsday. And really . . . three quarters of the island breached might be worse than one hundred percent. You’re looking at survivors, evacuation attempts . . .”

  Hammond continued as if Reggie had not spoken, saying, “You’re also assuming that two attacks per hour is possible. At a certain level of infection, those who are clear are going to be spread out and harder to find. The contamination will slow.”

  “This says over seventy-five percent of the population lives in the city,” Tab cut in, pointing to something on her phone. “It’s densely populated, and we have to assume any action by the local government or law enforcement is only going to make things worse. Evacuation centers, things like that . . . get a high volume of people in a small space.”

  “How long since the island went dark?” Gary asked in a husky voice.

  Reggie checked his watch and answered, “Seven hours.”

  Gary passed his hand over his eyes and tried to do the math in his head, but he found he could not focus on anything long enough to find an answer.

  “That puts us at a potential eleven thousand five hundred people carrying the breached nanites.” Reggie filled in the blank for him with a sympathetic smile. “If our assumptions and calculations are right,” he finished quickly after a look from Hammond.

  “So . . . so it’s still manageable right now. Right? That’s not . . . I mean, if we could just let people know, we could slow it down,” Gary said.

  No one answered.

  “I mean, if people knew to stay away from the injured or people behaving strangely. Or if we could just let someone know to get the uninfected off the island . . .”

  They watched him, still silent. A wave of frustration swept up from his gut, and he found himself suddenly on his feet.

  “So what? You’re just going to sit here theorizing until the whole island is gone? I guess it’s a natural quarantine in and of itself, right? There’s nothing forcing you to act. I don’t understand this. Why haven’t you gone to the news outlets?” he fumed.

  Hammond held up a hand and said, “We certainly understand your frustration, but try to stay calm. We have to consider what exposing this would mean for the population in the contiguous states.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gary shouted. “I brought you what you said you needed”—he jabbed a finger at Josie—“and you’re doing nothing with it. We need to start working on something, and while you’re doing that, people need to be informed of the truth. Give me something I can take to the news outlets—anything.”

  “Gary, you have no idea what Argo is capable of,” Hammond answered in a measured tone.

  “I’m not afraid of this company,” he roared. “I’m afraid of what’s happening around my kids, to all those people on the island, and the fact that you want to keep it from the general public . . . what if it gets to the mainland, and no one knows still? What then? If we let everyone know, then people can be prepared; they can—”

  “Stay home from work? Barricade their doors? Empty grocery stores? Or worse, start looting?” Hammond cut in. “We have no idea what’s happening on Oahu, and we have no reason to think it will get here before we’re able to address it.”

  “And if it does?” Gary was shaking with rage. The older man sitting across the room from him looked calm, placid—as if he had nothing at stake in the argument. To him, the debate was purely academic.

  “He’s right,” Josie said quietly. She looked up at Hammond, whose calm demeanor melted into a disapproving frown.

  “If we let him go to the news with some information, as long as he reports anonymously, we stand a chance at getting things mobilized. More people attacking the problem can only be a good thing,” she continued. “We let him take the videos as corroboration, and then he can tell them his story as an anonymous source. Even if it’s just the blogosphere and conspiracy theorists who pick it up to begin with, it will start to gain traction even
tually. In the meantime, we start using the sample and figuring this thing out. We hope it’s contained on the island, but like he said, if it isn’t, then people here need to know.” She looked to Hammond again and said, “You’d want to know.”

  The older man held her gaze for a few long moments, then waved his hand in surrender and said, “Fine. He takes a copy of the video and his story. But he goes alone with a cell phone, and we’ll guide him back once he’s done. I’m not risking any of you going out there again.”

  “Fine,” Gary spat, the hard edge in his voice surprising him. “You give me what you can give me, and I’ll get where I need to go.”

  ~

  The gun in Sarah’s hand was much heavier than she had expected; the way people waved them around in cop shows and action movies didn’t match with the unyielding weight she gripped, finger straight along the barrel the way Mike had shown her. Don’t put your finger on the trigger unless you absolutely have to. And don’t point it at anything you don’t mean to shoot. Mike’s words became her own as she repeated them over and over in her head, all of her thoughts focused on the lethal weapon he had handed her minutes earlier. That focus was the only thing keeping her from dissolving into a mass of trembling goo at the idea of walking out of the station.

  Mike stood at the lobby door, squinting out into the night, with a rifle slung across his back and two holstered pistols at his hips. He had given Heather another rifle and another two pistols, which she wore in the same way. In a small, detached part of her mind, Sarah was impressed with Heather’s confidence with the weapons. The older girl had shrugged and told her quietly that Mike insisted she know how to handle a gun if she was going to run the shop. She had also grabbed a Taser and a canister of bear mace that Sarah wore hooked into a belt loop on her jeans.

  “Once you step out, we’re locking the door,” one of the nameless women said, her voice edgy and frightened. Several members of the group had already locked themselves in a holding cell down the hall, while a few others waited in the lobby to secure it after she, Mike, and Heather left. Her stomach seized up at the finality of the choice; leaving the lobby was a bridge burned, but Mike seemed certain that staying much longer would be more dangerous than taking their chances out on the road.