“An observation room?” Harper asked.
Addy smiled. “It’s where we’re keeping the chiral ferrets that Stinton cloned, so we can study them.”
Harper frowned. “Snotface and Sneaky Pete? What do you mean, study them?”
Addy could tell from the analyst’s tone that she suspected the worst. “It’s not how it sounds,” she reassured the other woman. “They’re living in ferret luxury, I promise you that. The lab techs adore them and are constantly bringing them new toys or treats.”
Gabe’s expression turned curious. “Why keep them locked up?”
“The main reason is that one of them is chiral and wouldn’t survive without specially formulated food only we can provide,” Addy said. “We very much want to understand how that entangled connection of theirs works. But everything we’re doing is noninvasive and with their cooperation.”
She shot them both a wry smile. “I can’t begin to tell you how interesting that process has been.”
Harper snorted. “I can imagine.”
Addy shook her head. “I have no idea what prompted Stinton to implant them with E-V comms, but I can’t deny that even the basic communication they’re capable of has been helpful.”
Harper seemed satisfied with the explanation, so Addy continued. “The floor above us is home to the L3 and L4 labs. That’s where we keep the materials that can pose serious to lethal risks. Both of these levels are under constant observation by medical SIs. Lab workers use full protection, and access is controlled at all times. She looked at Gabe with a wry expression. “Not that it stopped the thief.”
Gabe shook his head. “Don’t beat yourself up, Addy. Medical SIs aren’t there for security; they’re there for safety.” He looked around. “This is your show. What’s the best way to go about scanning those labs, so we can find out which vials are missing?”
Addy grimaced. “I know it’s hard to believe, but the system isn’t showing anything missing, and the serial numbers from the feed the agent sent us were partially obscured,” she said. “We may have to do it physically, by hand.”
Harper pointed to the secured jack built into Addy’s desk that would allow hard-link access to the CID’s mainframe. “May I?”
The captain waved her toward it. “Be my guest.”
She reached for a stack of security-sealed plasfilm documents to make more room for Harper, but froze when she heard her office door slide open. She saw Harper swiftly blank the holo she’d just brought up.
Gabe’s mental voice cracked like a whip across her wire. {Captain, did you lock your door?}
{I thought I did….}
Addy’s mental voice trailed off as she spied the figure standing there. It was humanoid in form, though clearly inorganic.
{That’s Dave,} she told him in relief. {He’s one of the Center’s mobile SIs, and the one the tech department’s been experimenting with the most. I’m sorry, I guess my door wasn’t locked.}
The Synthetic Intelligence housed inside the mobile frame came to a stop in front of Addy.
“Good morning, Captain Moran,” Dave greeted. “Can I interest you and your guests in a fresh cup of coffee? I can whip up one of today’s specials for you.”
What the hell? Addy shot Gabe a swift look before moving toward the SI. “Dave, I’m in the middle of a meeting—”
“Today’s special?” Gabe interrupted.
{Is this normal for it to just barge in like this?} Harper asked.
{No, he’s never done this before. I’ve never had him offer guests coffee before, either. And I have no idea what ‘specials’ he’s referring to.}
{Keep it talking,} Gabe instructed. {Let’s see what it does.}
That wasn’t hard to do. It seemed the SI had an agenda of its own.
“I’ve been experimenting with some of the specialty salts Jenna in L3 brought in,” the SI said, its tone sounding oddly earnest. “I’ve been making caramel macchiatos with a sprinkling of the salts added to the top. The front desk loves them.”
Addy sent Gabe a look of unease.
He held up a hand and turned to the SI. “I’d like some. Just straight coffee, please. Cream, no sugar.” Gabe’s gaze shifted to Harper, and he gave a subtle nod.
“Sure, why not? I’ll try your special, Dave.”
The SI beamed at Harper. “I’m certain you’ll love it, Miss Kinsley. What about you, Captain? Would you like your regular, ma’am?”
How the hell would he know what my ‘regular’ is? Addy wondered, but followed Gabe’s lead, and simply said, “Yes, please.”
The SI nodded pleasantly, pivoted, and then exited the office.
“That was…weird,” Harper commented.
“I agree. I suppose my drinking habits are stored in the break room machine’s memory.” Addy measured her words slowly as she thought it through. “He could have accessed the security kiosk to learn your identities, too. Still, that felt awfully… proactive for an SI.”
Harper nodded, her gaze clinging thoughtfully to Addy’s empty door frame. “Definitely the most modified SI I’ve encountered yet,” she replied.
“The Center’s lead programmer has been tweaking Dave’s machine learning capabilities,” Addy told them. “The intent was to make L4 experimentation safer by using SIs instead of humans, while still getting the results we need. I wonder….”
“You think someone meddled with his base code?” Gabe asked sharply.
“I think it would be a good idea to find out for sure,” she replied.
“Let me insert a search worm behind the Center’s firewall,” Harper said. “I’ll poke around and see what I can find.”
A few minutes later, the SI reappeared, tray in hand. It was laden with three large, steaming mugs. Behind the mugs sat two small, espresso-sized cups.
Addy shot Gabe a mystified look as it came to a stop in front of her desk and set the tray down.
“Coffee, black, for the captain,” Dave said, handing a mug to Addy.
“White for Agent Alvarez,” the SI added, handing the next mug to Gabe.
Picking up the final mug, Dave handed Harper her drink. “And one special for you, Miss Kinsley.”
“Dave, what’s with the smaller cups?” Addy asked curiously.
The SI smiled and gave a half-bow. “I took the liberty of whipping up a few samples of today’s special, on the house.” He winked. “In case you changed your mind.”
{That’s some initiative,} Addy heard Harper observe over the wire.
Cautiously, Gabe reached for one of the cups. “On the house, huh? Where’d you hear that?”
Gabe’s shuttered gaze flickered to Addy’s briefly as she reached for her own sample.
Her eyes widened as she took her first sip. “Wow, Dave. This is good. You’ve really missed your calling. Or exceeded your programming.”
“Or both,” she heard Harper whisper from beside Gabe.
“Ah, well, thank you for the coffees, Dave,” Addy said quickly, to cover Harper’s comment. “I’ll let you know if we need anything else.”
She expected the SI to respond and then leave, but Dave did neither. It just stood there, unblinking—as if frozen.
Addy leaned forward, peering intently into the SI’s eyes.
Not eyes. Visual receptors, she reminded herself silently. Don't anthropomorphize. “Dave?” she called out, but there was no answer.
She exchanged a concerned look with Harper.
The analyst’s brows lifted. She rose and walked over to where the SI stood, and walked carefully around Dave’s frozen frame. She had just reached for the frame’s access panel when the SI suddenly came back to life.
Harper sprang back.
“I’ll leave you folks to your investigation, then,” Dave said pleasantly, as if the glitch had never occurred.
As the SI turned to walk away, Addy called out, “Wait. Dave, where did you go just now?”
The SI blinked. “Go?” he repeated. “I haven’t gone anywhere, Captain. I have bee
n here for the past five minutes, thirteen seconds.”
“You froze,” she said. “We could get no response from you for a good fifteen, maybe twenty seconds.”
The SI made a humming noise. “I will run a self-diagnostic. Please do not concern yourself. I feel fine.”
Addy let Dave leave, her eyes following the retreating frame. She palmed her door closed, locking it this time.
“Exactly how odd was that SI’s behavior just now?” Gabe queried.
“On a scale of one to totally creepy? Pretty high,” Addy admitted. “It wouldn’t bother me so much, if he was either limited to our sector or banned from it altogether. I don’t like that he’s freely roaming the Center.”
Harper pivoted around to face them. “You think your programmer’s coming close to singularity?”
Addy tilted her head, considering the question. “You mean sentience? I… doubt it, but what do I know? We’re been postulating that—and they’ve been predicting it was imminent—for three hundred years.”
Gabe nodded toward the hallway where Dave had disappeared. “It’s awfully coincidental that your SI would begin to act differently right after those vials were stolen.” He frowned. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Addy stared back at him. “No,” she said slowly. “Neither do I.”
“Good, because you’re not going to believe what I just found,” Harper’s gaze was fixed on the holodisplay projecting their hard-link connection.
She reached into the image, manipulating the data. A string of characters morphed into a visual feed of an office.
Addy stepped closer to the holo, something about the image teasing a memory. “That’s Leah’s office,” she said as realization struck. “She’s the Center’s head programmer.”
“She was the Center’s head programmer,” Harper corrected, her voice sounding odd.
She adjusted the holo once more, enlarging the picture.
What Addy had originally dismissed as a shadow behind the office’s lone desk…wasn’t. Leah’s still figure lay slumped, her body placed at an unnatural angle.
Addy didn’t need the feed’s sensors to confirm what her medical training already told her. She knew what she was seeing.
Leah Harris was dead.
PREVENTIVE MEASURES
Unknown Location
Unknown passage of time
Awareness returned to Sam slowly. She realized she was resting on a soft yet firm surface. Her limbs felt weighted, which implied she was in a gravitational field of one sort or another.
As she wiggled her fingers experimentally, she could sense a diffuse light begin to grow in intensity behind her closed lids.
Triggered by my movements, no doubt.
Her eyes fluttered open, confirming her suspicions. She was inside a tau-neu chamber. Stasis, in layman’s terms. A place where all metabolic functions were suspended.
The soft white lighting and the slight breeze that blew across her face simulated the impression of expansiveness, a feature built into the tau-neu as a way to counteract feelings of claustrophobia.
The information poured into her brain from her med school days. Although Sam had eventually ended up working in the sciences rather than the medical field, she well recalled her first introduction to the chambers. All medical doctors were required to experience what it was like to be ensconced inside a tau-neu at some point during their residencies. It was deemed an essential part of learning about critical care.
On the heels of that thought, memory came flooding back.
Those suns-cursed NSA agents, she thought in annoyance.
The one named McGee had been adamant that she travel to the secret base in this way. She’d refused, arguing that it hadn’t been necessary when she’d gone to deGrasse.
“And you see how well that worked out,” he’d stated.
Her thoughts had instantly flown to a dark-haired, blue-eyed man whose life had been forged at deGrasse. The act of terrorism had killed tens of thousands, but it had produced one very unique individual.
McGee hadn’t known that, though, and she’d had no intention of telling him.
Sam placed a palm on the chamber’s surface, a scant twenty centimeters from her face. Her touch activated the unit. The smooth, white surface split down the center, its sides retracting. One look around confirmed she was in a different location.
When the chamber’s shroud had lowered, she’d been in the cargo hold of a small ship. Now, she was in a brightly lit laboratory of some sort.
Sam remained still, mentally cataloguing what she could sense of her environment before making any attempt to move. She inhaled, and the dry, slightly metallic taste of recirculated air hit the back of her throat. There was just a hint of ozone in the mix that told her she was on a station of some kind.
One without a hydroponics system, if they’re using electrolysis to generate breathable air.
She started to sit up just as a face appeared within her view. The man was wearing a Navy ship’s suit, the holopips on his collar indicating he was a medical corpsman.
“Doctor Travis,” he greeted with a smile. His gaze shifted to somewhere above her head, and she realized he was reading the status display at the top of the tau-neu chamber. He nodded, as if satisfied. “Looks like you're ready to go, ma'am.”
He held out a hand, and she grasped it. His accent suddenly registered as he levered her out of the unit.
“You're not from Procyon,” she observed.
His hand tightened convulsively around her arm for a brief instant, before relaxing once more. “No, ma'am,” he responded smoothly. “I'm an embassy brat. Raised at one of the consulates around the Jovian moons.”
She nodded. “I’ll bet that was an interesting childhood.”
He made a noncommittal sound, and she turned her attention to her surroundings. The room was about as nondescript as a room could be, with plain, unadorned bulkheads. They were clean enough, but somehow gave the impression of age.
She turned back to the corpsman. “Where are we?”
The corpsman shot her an apologetic look. “Sorry, ma'am. I’m not at liberty to say.”
She merely nodded, expecting nothing less. “Do I at least get some sort of orientation before you throw me into whatever project you brought me here to work on?”
“That would be my job,” a smiling voice said from behind her.
Sam turned. “And you are?”
“Colonel Marceau.” The man extended a hand. “Welcome to the Alliance’s Rosen Laboratory. And no, I’m not going to tell you where it’s located, either.”
Sam’s brow rose at that.
“Wheeler, Feynman, deGrasse, and now Rosen,” she murmured as she took the man’s proffered hand. “If nothing else, at least we’re consistent, aren’t we?”
Marceau laughed. “I suppose you’re right,” he said, releasing her hand and looking around at the sparse room. “Most of the Alliance’s research facilities have been named after famous Old Earth physicists.”
Sam kept her smile firmly in place, but cocked her head inquiringly. “I’ve never heard of a Colonel Marceau in the Geminate Navy. Why is that?”
“I suppose that’s a fair question, given the circumstances,” he admitted. “The past few years, I’ve been stationed here, running Rosen. Prior to that, I was based in Sirius, so unless you’ve spent a lot of time out there, I doubt our paths would have crossed.”
“You don’t mind if I confirm that for myself, do you?”
Rather than bristling at her, the man seemed to find her skepticism humorous. His grin widened and he chuckled. “You’re exactly as Duncan described you, outspoken and candid. It’s refreshing to have someone speak so frankly with me. Not many do around here.”
He winked and leaned in as if confiding something. “I’ve heard it’s not good for career advancement to behave like that to the facility’s commanding officer.”
The man was doing his best to make her feel welcome, and Sam felt her unea
se melt away.
“Now, to address your concerns. I apologize for the way you were brought here, Sam. Can I call you Sam?” he asked, spearing her with a questioning look. “The way your uncle talks about you, I feel as if I know you already. I know the agents who brought you here weren’t free to divulge much. I assume they told you that you’re needed to help us prevent a chiral disaster?”
His words had Sam hugging her arms around herself. Marceau mistook that for her being chilled, and abruptly stopped.
“I’m sorry. I completely forgot you’re wearing civilian clothes,” he apologized, and gestured toward the room’s exit. “Here. Let me show you to your quarters. We’ve taken the liberty of supplying you with a few standard shipsuits that’ll allow you to regulate your temperature. We’ll stop by the mess hall along the way and grab you something warm to drink.”
Sam nodded her thanks and followed him out the door. At least she’d get a chance to mentally map her surroundings, in case her misgivings turned out to be justified.
The corridor was as bland as the room they’d just left. The passageways were unrelenting metal-composite bulkheads, with no distinguishing marks of any kind.
Marceau ducked into an empty mess hall where a digital-to-biological converter had been installed. The DBC could replicate simple foods and drinks, and was most often used in offices or mess halls like this during off hours.
Heading over to it, he called over his shoulder. “Coffee? Tea? What’s your poison?”
“Tulsi tea, if the unit’s programmed for it,” she responded. “No sweetener.”
“One tulsi, coming up.”
He must have accessed the unit from his wire’s overlay, for the DBC immediately came to life. When it finished, he handed the insulated cup to her with a small flourish and then gestured to the passageway.
“Let’s walk while you enjoy your tea. I can show you to your quarters so you can get settled.” He placed a hand at her elbow, the contact allowing a request to flash on Sam’s overlay.
She realized abruptly that her wire had been quiescent ever since her arrival. A swift look told her there was a single encrypted network signal available, and she was denied access.
The Chiral Protocol – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: Biogenesis War Book 2 (The Biogenesis War) Page 10