by S. L. Dunn
Below his calm face, a fiery anger was rising. “What do you want to know?”
She looked at him with a dubious and scared expression. “Um, how about everything? What the hell is going on?”
“I told you, I’m on an errand.” He grabbed her and continued forward. Walking in the other direction, an unkempt teenager wearing headphones and reading something on his phone brushed shoulders with Vengelis and bounced backward, falling to the ground heavily. As Vengelis stepped over him, the kid held up his broken headphones and shouted something with a spit-filled fury, but neither Vengelis nor Madison acknowledged him.
“Why are you here? Is the errand to like, I don’t know . . . kill everyone?”
Vengelis said nothing; he looked down the long avenue at the tall glass buildings on either side. He cringed at the thought of what Hoff and Darien must be doing to the similarly flimsy buildings in the other city, each of them following his command.
“Well? I think that’s a perfectly reasonable question,” Madison said.
“No,” Vengelis muttered with little interest. “I’m not here to kill everyone. I couldn’t care less about you people.”
“Then why are you here?”
Vengelis drove his hand into his armor and pulled out the Harbinger I remote to see if Hoff had tried to make contact with him, but the Lord General had not. Vengelis opened Pral Nerol’s Felix report and held the screen out to Madison. It was a labeled diagram of a Felix cell. Madison’s eyes narrowed and she slowed her step to look at the image.
“What is that?” she asked.
“That, more or less, is my question as well. There’s a convention of your scientists at the Marriott Marquis. I will put that question before the smartest of your race.”
“I don’t understand . . . what is that thing?”
“Enough!” Vengelis waved a hand. “Take me to the Marriott Marquis.”
Madison was about to press the issue when the avenue transitioned into Times Square. Vengelis noticed that what she saw took her aback. Sprawling several blocks before him, a multitude of people was frozen in place on the sidewalks, their faces upturned to the giant screens and live-action billboards that hung among the tall buildings. Lines of cars and taxis were parked in the middle of the street, the drivers and passengers leaning out their windows and staring agape at the huge screens. As Vengelis and Madison approached the subdued crowds, the billboards were still out of sight; they could not yet see what had so completely captured seemingly the entire city’s attention.
“What the hell is going on?” she murmured, looking out across the countless frightened faces in dismay. Knowing exactly what was going on, Vengelis suddenly reached down and took Madison by the arm and quickened his pace, knocking people out of the way before him.
“They must have begun,” he said.
“What? Begun what?” Madison was forced to break into a jog in order to keep up with him.
"Which building is it?” Vengelis demanded, his tone harsh.
As they pushed through the transfixed pedestrians, Madison turned her head and strained to look up at the giant screens. Vengelis noticed her trip, nearly falling, as she saw what was being depicted on the billboard screens. Each one was flipping from colorful products and celebrities to a single unified news broadcast. Within moments, all of the billboard-sized screens were flashing the same breaking headline:
CHICAGO UNDER ATTACK. HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS FEARED DEAD.
It was a live video feed from a helicopter, and the camera moved wildly as it recorded a broad landscape shot. Underneath a harsh gunmetal sky, a city skyline was barely identifiable. Gray-brown dust formed a thick blanket over the area. Giant plumes of black ash and smoke rose into the low clouds.
“Oh no . . .” Madison said. She would have fallen to her knees if Vengelis had not yanked her upright.
“I don’t have long!” Vengelis said. “Which building is the Marriott Marquis?”
“You . . . ordered?” she said through short breaths.
“Yes.” Vengelis glanced up at the screens. The destruction was having the exact effect he had hoped for, but time was no longer on his side. The convention would be cancelled any second, and a citywide evacuation would begin within minutes. People would begin migrating out of every major city—that is, if they had any sense whatsoever.
“But,” Madison gasped.
“Which building is the Marriott Marquis?” Vengelis suddenly screamed at her and throttled her body.
Madison’s head hung droopily by her shoulder, her eyes still trained with dread on the screens. The broadcast was now zooming in on random spots in the dust-filled massacre. It was unmistakable; the buildings in the heart of Chicago were being utterly destroyed. Gasps and terrible cries broke out from the crowds watching the feed alongside them. Hands reached up and covered gaping mouths and eyes unwillingly watched with sick disbelief. A number of panicked voices began to break the anxious silence around them. People started aggressively pushing bystanders aside as they made for the subway. Vengelis watched the escalating panic with no pleasure, only a hope that the scientists would be encouraged by the dread he was now witnessing. He heard a man alongside them mutter that it could not be terrorists, and a young girl holding her father’s hand ask him if they were safe in New York.
All at once, as though practiced in a chorus, the screams rose. Like the crescendo in a brutal symphony, Times Square began to surge and thrash, the very cement beneath their feet shaking from the unified wail of fear. Madison’s face went pale, but she held her ground against Vengelis.
“You ordered that attack!” she screamed over the crowd.
“Yes, I did. Where is the Marriott Marquis?”
“How could you?”
Vengelis pulled her close to him, inadvertently lifting her clean off the ground. His face was mere inches from hers. “WHERE IS THE MARRIOT MARQUIS?” he shouted in her face. “If you do not tell me right now, I’m going to leave you here to die with the rest of these people! You can be another nameless face in this hysteria. And believe me, if I don’t get what I want, this city will get it just as hard as the one you are witnessing now. I have to get to the convention right now or all of this will have been for nothing!”
Madison’s face twisted with conflict. She breathed heavily and looked from the images of the carnage in Chicago to Vengelis’s enraged gaze. A man in a flannel shirt pushed into Madison’s back as he sprinted toward the subway. She fell forward, narrowly missing another man who was shoving through the crowd with his messenger bag swinging wildly at his side. A stampede had begun.
Vengelis had succeeded with the first part of his plan. He had successfully lit the spark of pandemonium, and soon the entire world would be crackling and roaring with it. By sundown of that day no one would be safe—from either Vengelis or the ubiquitous mobs of terrified people.
Submission was already his.
“The Marriott Marquis is right there at the corner of the block,” Madison said, at last, opting for survival and pointing a finger to the tall glass hotel. “You’re a monster,” she added.
“That is a matter of perspective,” Vengelis said. He broke into a run toward the entrance to the Marriott Marquis, Madison sprinting along beside him on her own volition. They pushed through the front doors into a lushly carpeted lobby. Vengelis looked around with a panicked confusion. A few dozen people huddled around a television mounted in the lobby coffee shop. It was showing the same broadcast as the giant screens of the street.
“What is this?” Vengelis asked as he looked up into the countless floors. He hadn’t been anticipating further complications. “Where are the scientists?”
“This is the lobby.” Madison said distractedly, approaching the vacant concierge desk. “There!”
A computer screen had the day’s event schedule displayed. Among others was written: ICST Science Convention: Lutvak Ballroom, 2nd floor. At once Vengelis was off, moving fast. Madison had to race to keep up with him, breathing heav
y as she trod the rich carpet. He tore up the stairway and followed an arrow to the ballrooms. The white double doors of the Lutvak ballroom were closed, and he let out a long uneasy exhale as he approached them.
Vengelis pushed the heavy doors open and stepped in.
A presentation was underway. There was a pretty young woman on the stage talking to a crowd of a few hundred people sitting quietly in rows of chairs. A projection screen hung behind her above the center of the stage. At the top of the screen was the title: Columbia Vatruvian Technologies Research. Vengelis fell back in horrified disbelief as he turned his attention to the screen. He saw something there that resided in his nightmares. With numb hands he pulled out the Harbinger I remote and connected with Hoff.
“Yes, my lord?” Lord General Hoff’s voice shouted faintly over crashing on the other end.
“Drop what you are doing and get to New York immediately.” Vengelis looked down at his remote and turned his gaze from Pral Nerol’s report to the projection screen overhead. On the stage in the front of the ballroom, rotating in three-dimensional perspective, was an unmistakable Felix cell.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Kristen
As Kristen stood behind the podium preparing for her lecture, her fear of public speaking vastly outweighed any dread she felt toward her precarious location in Times Square during a heightened national security alert. She stared out at the few hundred people in attendance as prickly nerves tumbled through her body and left her feeling empty and exposed.
Kristen turned to Professor Vatruvia, who was sitting beside the podium in all of his glory, waving to people he recognized in the crowd. She resented his polished 60 Minutes guise; it concealed the deep reserve of reckless ambition he had just below the surface.
A convention worker signaled for Kristen to begin, and she anxiously moved the cursor of the laptop and clicked the play button on the slideshow she had prepared with the additional slide on the Vatruvian mice. That one slide would bring their research crashing down. How would Professor Vatruvia’s self-satisfied expression transform when he saw the slide? An enormous high-definition image of a Vatruvian cell came to colorful life on the projector screen behind her, and the ballroom filled with inspired applause. A few piercing whistles sounded from the ocean of eager faces. She often forgot the degree to which the Vatruvian cell was the coveted vanguard of the scientific world. Kristen nodded in acknowledgement of the applause and felt color rise in her cheeks. The numb sensation traveling through her body reminded her of how she felt before the curtains were drawn back in her third-grade class play. She had been Martha Washington. Standing paralyzed behind the podium, Kristen felt as though she was still a terrified eight-year-old wearing a white bonnet. All of her degrees and accomplishments did nothing to overcome the sudden deluge of self-doubt. She took a deep breath, her pulse nearly choking her vocal chords.
“Thank you. Thank you very much,” Kristen spoke into the microphone and listened to her own magnified voice carry easily across the ballroom. She thought it sounded nasally. The first words were always the hardest. “I would first like the thank the ICST organization for allowing our research team the privilege of presenting our work here at the convention. It is a great honor to be among so many prominent researchers.” She took a deep steadying breath, and the room fell so silent she could hear the whir of the laptop in front of her. “I am Kristen Jordan, and I work with the genetics of the Vatruvian cell. I’ve been a part of the Vatruvian cell research efforts alongside Professor Vatruvia since the project’s very beginning. My primary area of study has been specific to the deconstructing of biological cells’ genetic structure and the reconstructing of viable synthetic variations.”
Kristen kept her eyes locked on the rear wall of the ballroom, avoiding eye contact from the politely nodding heads and prying eyes of the front rows. Ryan was out there somewhere, and though she could not hope to find him among all the faces looking at her, that knowledge gave her reassurance. At least one person in the audience would have her back when she told them of the mice. She realized, thinking of Ryan and only Ryan despite the crowd, that she was falling in love with him.
“Though we have made tremendous progress recently in our research, I will start by first providing a basic overview of the Vatruvian cell since its earliest developmental stages over a year ago.” Kristen’s breathing was becoming less constricted, her words less labored and her voice beginning to feel like her own again. “When Professor Vatruvia first contacted me with a proposal for a cutting-edge research endeavor, we spoke of discovering a means to create a truly synthetic cell. Well, from there on . . . the sky has been the limit.”
The irksome ringtone of a cell phone sounded from the audience, but Kristen ignored it. “As I’m sure you all know, what we ended up with was something slightly more complex and elegant than even we could have expected.”
Two more cell phones rang, and then a third. Their owners fumbled to silence them as their inane jingles played for the ballroom to hear. But there was something far stranger than the few chirpy ringtones breaking the polite silence of the crowd. The very ballroom itself seemed to be faintly pulsating with vibrating plastic. Countless cell phones that had been appropriately set to silent were vibrating in pockets and handbags. The abrupt surge of telecommunications was inexplicable, and in a way unsettling. Why were so many people being reached all at once? Kristen only hesitated for a moment before clearing her throat. She was about to continue when she noticed the double doors in the back of the room burst open. Her eyes lingered on the doors as a bizarrely out of place young man and woman walked into the ballroom. Not wanting to get distracted, Kristen quickly averted her gaze.
“What we were able to do in the earliest stages was—to put it simply—create never before seen proteins that. . . .”
Kristen’s attention was magnetically pulled back to the young man and woman as the room continued to buzz with cell phones. For a moment she thought the strange young man was Ryan, but she quickly thought the better of it. He was strikingly good-looking, even from across the ballroom, though he was dressed in a peculiar outfit. From her distance, Kristen thought it might be a costume. He was staring at the image of the Vatruvian cell on the projection screen behind her in what appeared to be a mingling of amazement and dismay. Kristen forcefully moved her attention away from the young man and cleared her throat once more.
“What resulted was a functional cell that operated similarly to a biological cell, but was comprised of an entirely fabricated genetic code that included our own alterations. From there—”
Kristen at last stopped altogether and threw her hands up in irritated exasperation. A number of things were happening. The room was now echoing with a throng of cell phone rings so consistently that she could barely think. The young man in the bizarre attire had moved to one of the side emergency exits and seemed to be barring the door shut behind the backs of the seated audience. The doorframe was making strident creaking sounds, and some heads turned in the back row to see what he was doing, but the cell phones distracted most of the audience’s attention. At the same moment a hotel manager was waving an arm to Kristen as he hastily approached the stage and jogged down the center aisle.
Kristen looked from the manager back to the mysterious young man in the back, who was now moving to another emergency exit on the other end of the room, and seemed to be barring that door, too. The woman he was with had sunken into an empty chair in the rear row and buried her face in her hands, appearing to be distraught over something.
“Excuse me, miss,” the hotel manager called out to Kristen.
Every face in the ballroom turned to him in surprise. He came onto the stage and motioned for Kristen to step aside. As she did so, she saw the strange young man now closing the main double doors to the ballroom, and barring them last. Kristen glared at him uncertainly and raised a finger to point at him, but all eyes were on the hotel manager.
“If I can please have everyone’s undivided a
ttention.” The manager took the microphone as Kristen stepped out of the way. “We have been informed that the city of Chicago is under some sort of attack. The federal government has issued a national state of emergency, and has advised the evacuation of every major city. Our concierge staff will remain downstairs to direct people to the proper evacuation routes should they require any assistance.” His words had an immediate effect on the audience, which erupted into an appalled uproar. The manager raised his voice over the upheaval and yelled into the microphone. “We are postponing the convention, and closing the hotel until further notice. If you have belongings in one of our rooms, we assure you the room will remain locked, and your valuables safe, until the hotel reopens. We are advising all of our guests and employees to calmly and orderly exit the hotel and make your way out of the city.”
Kristen watched as the bizarre young man stepped away from the main double doors and began to walk down the center aisle with an explicit manner of command. There was something extraordinary about him, and as the hotel manager made his announcement, Kristen’s gaze fixated on this stranger; he looked out of place, incongruous with the ballroom and the situation. The moment the hotel manager finished his announcement the mysterious young man abruptly raised his arms into the air.
“Everyone get back to your seats!” the young man called out, but no one seemed to hear him aside from Kristen. He brought his attention to the stage and stared directly at her. Not knowing what to think, Kristen held his gaze as he approached the stage. The audience around him was frenzied, taking no heed of his demand. People were moving to the exits only to find them barred shut. Shoulders clogged at each set of doors, and people began to shout across the ballroom to each other as they realized they had been locked in. Kristen heard indiscriminate shouts about bent steel door handles and frames that would not budge.