Tires screeched in the parking lot as two deputies in their cruisers boxed in a black Escalade. I had to laugh to myself: Hector wasn’t so oblivious and inside his own mind after all. Things might actually work themselves out.
Sheriff Wilson grinned and shook his head. “I knew you two couldn’t stay out of trouble in my county. Hope you don’t mind that I followed you.”
All I could do was grin like an idiot.
I ended up taking part of the samples to a fertility clinic in Atlanta, where I told them I wanted to store my eggs. They had no idea it was the sample, but I needed an anonymous place to keep the specimen safe.
Now it was time to finish my research.
Chapter 14
Winter
Thirty-Two Months After the NOBI Discovery
Marcy Noll
National Security Adviser to the President
I was the first national security adviser to the president when the National Security Council was merged with the Department of Homeland Security after the terrorist attacks in New York and Los Angeles. The congressional act combining the two departments came together relatively quickly. My promotion came quickly after that, when the two more senior advisers in line abruptly resigned; they were found to have leaked classified information to a reporter. I had nothing to do with that, contrary to unsourced gossip on various blogs.
People warned me not to work on Capitol Hill. It’s a cesspool of sexism, glass ceilings, and harassment. I guess they didn’t realize I used to love kicking over a hornet’s nest. Once you bitch-slap an offender when no one else is around and dare them to say something, once you learn the subtle art of blackmail, once you sabotage a rival and then let them know about it, once people fear making your list of things to do today—this makes the ride much smoother. It’s these kinds of milestones that expose our true character in Washington, DC.
After years grinding away on various budget committees, I had recently landed a plum assignment: the Homeland Security Committee. When not strategizing new legislation, it was my duty to keep members informed of current events affecting Homeland Security, many of which were classified. As chief counsel, I had top secret clearance and the constant thrill of being privy to our most closely held secrets…It was intoxicating! This was all in spite of the soul-sucking atmosphere of this town. Once I told an acquaintance I just couldn’t trust anyone in DC. The response was “Yeah, but once you get past that…”
I also was promoted over my fool of a boss. I can still remember the dumb look on his face—a weird painted-on fake smile, like the Joker’s permanent grin—when the news came down. I fully deserved the promotion, but that idiot didn’t even realize how he’d hijacked his own prospects—a sexist to the very end. He always tried to interject “personal” topics into everyday conversations. His go-to phrase was “Sorry, I’m just a very sexual person”—I must have missed that part of his personality—as he ran his tongue along his teeth with a weird smacking sound. He’d gotten away with it for years, but luckily the White House wasn’t about to take a chance on that kind of press relations time bomb with so much else at stake. So I got the nod, and without having to resort to any dirty tricks.
The year from hell began with the hacking of the Spring Meadow Power Plant, which served power to the Greater Philadelphia area; the hacking knocked out power for a week for over two million people. Over 70 percent of the 112 power substations were inoperable. It was a devastating economic and physical hardship and the first incident which led to a reassessment of how to better coordinate our agencies to protect the American people.
That was only the beginning of a summer of hacks on different prime structures in the United States, Europe, and Asia. Both agencies were running blind—how do you stop an army of code attacking something you cannot see?—and Congress thought it was time to try a unified front. I was appointed as the new head of the combined departments.
But two more power plants on the East Coast were attacked by a malicious code before Congress finally empowered us by approving funding for more vigilant tracking and secure additions to the computer code used by most of the nation’s power grids.
Then came the operations-specific hacks: firmware updates that caused failures in systems providing crucial niche services, such as hospital monitoring and medication dispensing equipment, traffic lights in major cities and populated thoroughfares, and aircraft control systems.1, 2 These types of essential functions left no room for error, and their disruption caused billions of dollars in damage and the significant loss of lives.
This resulted in a greater emphasis on server and computer security led by private corporations and governmental agencies. It was after these events that the NSA was merged into the new Homeland Security Department. The head of the new agency was the National Security Council, and as the president’s national security adviser, I was appointed as the new head of the combined departments.
As the new national security adviser, most of my time was consumed by the long war against various terrorist groups and the deteriorating Russian governmental structures. My personal life was in shambles during this time due to my workaholic ways. My first divorce was years behind me, and I was eager to get back out there, but I couldn’t keep a date for anything. And then the various Internet attacks came to the forefront and we had to confront the policies that would dictate our responses to these attacks. Given the obtuse nature of Internet disruptions, it was imperative that these be investigated thoroughly to determine if these attacks were state supported. Some of these attacks did have links to state entities, and thus began an Internet cold war with retaliatory hacking strikes by the U.S. against other countries, including China, Russia, and North Korea, and vice versa. Although it was never made explicit, such attacks became commonplace over the summer. Though the media implied that the disruptions were the work of criminal elements seeking monetary gain, the reality was a covert war waged by coders and hackers backed by state governments.
The Gloaming issue just wasn’t a priority with the administration—well, let me take that back. The Gloamings weren’t a national security priority for the administration in the beginning. Obviously, they were a health-care concern at first, but after the initial hysteria regarding the unknown aspects of the condition abated, and the Gloaming Equal Rights for All Act passed, the Gloamings simply became another segment of the population at large, although a segment not yet entirely understood. The president put the Gloamings back on the shelf as a public interest story.
We had some concerns when the reports came out that the Chinese were doing experiments on a kidnapped Gloaming, trying to replicate a serum to create an army of Gloamings. Given their physical abilities of strength and camouflage, it was a given that scientists would attempt to weaponize them. But we all know now that those experiments failed miserably—it’s a scientific fact that a Gloaming can only be re-created through the bite of another Gloaming. Re-creation certainly cannot happen through a test tube.
And even then, re-creation often failed. Nearly half died during the process—so many people in thrall to the glamour of the Gloamings seemed to conveniently forget this difficult fact. It brought a certain somberness to the idealized perception of re-creation.
Our informal biweekly council meetings were normally held in a secure conference room at the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters, where we would discuss the recent occurrences that might make our list of “inclusion events” for the president’s daily briefing. At this particular meeting, attended by Richard Crawford, deputy director of the CIA, Lauren Scott, from the CDC, and myself, the subject was whether the Gloamings should be considered a threat. There was a sizable amount of friction among various CIA analysts as to whether more effort should be made to consider treating the Gloamings as a possible threat and adjust our intelligence efforts accordingly.
“Can we just stick to the basics right now?” Richard asked as he poured himself another cup of coffee. “Can they not acquire the necessary nutriti
on from a source other than blood?”
Lauren put her hands up and shrugged. “They say they can. Our research is somewhat limited but it indicates that they can only survive by consuming blood. They have a certain enzyme that inhibits microbial decay of the blood they have consumed in their system, so the blood in their stomach can stay there like solid food. It’s generally accepted that they can survive on animal blood. But for how long, who knows? They need human blood.”
Richard glared at her. “Great. Like a tick.”
“How do they view non-Gloamings?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” Lauren replied.
I rubbed my temples; my head was throbbing. “Are we simply a vessel for food or are we partner species who coexist through a system of ethics that binds all knowledgeable species? Reasoning. Values. Religion. Any of these—are they moral persons that value the life of others?” I was trying to determine how to even begin assessing the threat of the Gloamings. Did they want our blood—or did they need it?
Richard poured himself yet another cup of coffee and rubbed his eyes. “Those murders. We know they’re Gloaming-related. Why cut off the heads?”
“The Gloamings, when they feed through a bite, will re-create the person unless the head is cut off,” Lauren stated. “The Gloamings have become quite discriminating when it comes to who is re-created. Hence the research for devices that attach to a person’s neck to facilitate feeding without the re-creation.”
Richard didn’t even attempt to hide his disgust. We ended the meeting with no clear answers.
Of course the re-creation of the Pope caught most intelligence agencies off guard. German and British intelligence agencies were especially disturbed by this occurrence. After the Pope re-created, Chinese leaders passed various laws prohibiting any re-creation of their citizens, barring Gloamings from entering the country. It was rather shortsighted in that many upper-level government officials and many wealthy Chinese desired to become Gloamings. But this was somewhat mitigated by the terrorist attacks on the U.S. embassy in Buenos Aires and the thirty-five-day war between Israel and Iran, which spilled over into Lebanon. The president and the secretary of state were busy trying to broker a cease-fire and prevent World War III. A pope becoming a Gloaming just wasn’t as pressing.
Only the FBI, as an agency, was involved in any threat posed by the Gloamings, as a result of the Gloaming Crimes Unit. But that was essentially a local law enforcement issue, not national security, until the FBI began an investigation into the disappearance of several top in vitro fertilization physicians around the world. Though others point to the National Guard issue as the spark, I’d mark IVF as the beginning of the recent troubles.
In vitro fertilization, or IVF, is a scientific process where an egg is fertilized by sperm outside the body. For women under thirty-five years of age in America, the success rate of IVF is about 50 percent. Doctors take ova from a woman’s ovaries and let the sperm fertilize them in a container with liquid. It’s cultured for about a week and then implanted in the same or another woman’s uterus—essentially, an egg is fertilized by sperm outside the body in order to establish a successful pregnancy.
The original unincorporated Gloaming Council began secret discussions about starting a reproduction program to find a way for Gloamings to reproduce as humans do: within a natural pregnancy. The first doctor hired by the Gloamings was Dr. Larry Cranston, one of the world’s foremost IVF experts. He moved from New York City to Las Cruces, New Mexico, and took a position at New Mexico State University, as well as at a private clinic, the Casablanca Lily Clinic. The clinic was built with a one-story ground floor and a five-story complex below the ground.
Dr. Cranston authored a confidential report that my security council intercepted during the National Guard crises. The report detailed a reproduction failure of 100 percent within the studied Gloamings. The study also found that in 40 percent of the women studied, unprotected sex with a Gloaming male caused irreversible damage to the uterus. In addition, Cranston found that he needed to rely on more speculative and primitive invasive procedures to do his testing, because modern imaging tests, such as ultrasound, hysteroscopy, and laparoscopy, could not be performed on Gloamings due to their radioactive nature.3
Any ethical doctor would have terminated the study there, or at least paused to investigate a less invasive path, especially given the dangers in the first place of allowing Gloamings to enter into consensual sexual encounters. But not Cranston: he kept going, in spite of the larger percentage of female participants who ended up with irreversible medical conditions ranging from pelvic inflammatory disease to uterine fibroids. His research further showed that while the female Gloaming’s estrogen and progesterone levels were as low as those of a human female beginning menstruation, and while female Gloamings went through a similar ovulatory and luteal phase in which ovulation occurs, a key difference was that the female Gloaming did not engage in menstrual bleeding.4 Dr. Cranston’s study diagnosed the issue as a hybrid polycystic ovarian syndrome [PCOS], in which follicles are unable to produce a mature egg.
Cranston also found that all of the female participants had blocked fallopian tubes which prevented the sperm from reaching the egg. In some of the subjects, the tubes prevented a fertilized egg from reaching the uterus. Apparently, these conditions in Gloaming females were attributed to the elevated blood levels, enlarged organs, and decrease in the amount of water in a Gloaming body. The forming of never-before-encountered hormones in the Gloaming body was also a cause of these infertility conditions.
Ironically, as some cultural commentators pointed out years later, the Gloamings then followed a distinctly “human” path. In other words, after this study failed and they were forced to abandon the idea of procreation through natural means, they turned their interest to the next option: in vitro fertilization.
Construction began in secret for a laboratory engineered about seven hundred feet into and under the side of a mountain in the San Andres mountain range, between the cities of Caballo and Tularosa, New Mexico. The unnamed facility consisted of four large underground buildings and one aboveground facility, with state-of-the-art environmentally controlled rooms. Our surveillance indicated that the combined structures consisted of four seventy-five-thousand-square-foot halls and research labs and over twenty-five administrative structures designed with concrete walls at minimum seven feet thick, to withstand the blast of a nuclear device. The walls were protected by a concrete wall seven feet thick, itself protected by another concrete wall of undetermined thickness. The roof was hardened with reinforced concrete and covered with fifty-five feet of earth.
Additionally, the facility contained a two-year supply of fuel, a deepwater well, NBC filtration systems, and geothermal heating and cooling. The laboratory was designed for wartime use and included manually operated ventilators in case supplies of electricity or gas became scarce. Ventilation openings that lined the structure were protected by titanium blast valves. A blast valve is closed by a shock wave but otherwise remains open, which ensures the viability of the structure and the occupants.
The Gloamings kept the construction of this facility secret for a surprisingly long period of time. A week after Nick Bindon Claremont was elected governor of New Mexico, a solo hiker working an off trail in the San Andres Mountains spotted the construction of the laboratory. He snapped a few photographs with his cell phone before he was chased off by private security. He posted the photos on a couple of Reddit subreddits dealing with hiking and the Greater New Mexico area, and discussions as to what was being built in the area quickly made the front page.
From that point, the Internet erupted.
At first, Governor Claremont refused to comment on the reports.
Then, when building permits to a newly formed LLC called the Rio Grande Institute were linked to a company Nick Bindon Claremont owned, he issued a statement saying that he indeed was the guiding force behind the laboratory, and emphasized that the complex was for medical adv
ancements for humans and Gloamings alike, with the main focus on cancer research. But this did little to contain the conspiracy theories sprouting up—namely, that the complex would be an enormous blood bank to feed Gloamings on the blood of various persons reported missing throughout the country. Or that the laboratory would be used to study the enhancement of the already powerful Gloaming physical characteristics.
Several months prior, various in vitro doctors and researchers began to disappear. After the fifth disappearance and an article in the Wall Street Journal, the FBI began an initial investigation. Evidence had been previously nonexistent until the case of Dr. Maggie Fitzpatrick.
Dr. Fitzpatrick was last seen leaving a bar called the One-Eyed Cat, where she had met coworkers for a drink and left when she complained of being tired. The cameras inside the bar recorded Maggie leaving alone.
The parking lot was behind the bar, but you had to walk behind the building to enter the lot. This was downtown, so most people tended to either walk down the sidewalk or through the alley. There were no cameras in the alley but there was one at a restaurant across from the One-Eyed Cat. A review of the tape from the relevant time period showed that no one resembling Dr. Maggie Fitzpatrick used the sidewalk to reach the parking lot.
Therefore, she had to have used the alley to get to her car. The parking lot had several cameras which showed Maggie never made it to her car. The FBI narrowed her abduction to the alley beside the bar—and the camera from the restaurant across the street showed a van driving into the alley at the exact time Maggie left the bar. An alarming number of other security cameras in the area had suddenly been broken that night, but one secreted inside a nearby antique shop showed the same van about an hour before Maggie entered the bar. The passenger door to the van was open but the footage was full of static—consistent with feedback caused by Gloaming presence.
A People's History of the Vampire Uprising Page 23