Other than a low hum from the unit, the only sound in the room came from Harper’s heels, which clicked crisply against the tiled floor as she crossed over to the vials.
She heard a familiar chittering sound, followed by a voice that asked, {You bring food? Sam with you? Micah? Micah too?}
There was a scratching sound, and she turned to see a pair of tiny hands scrabbling at the door that separated the lab from the ferret’s domain.
“Hey there, Sneaky Pete.”
The ferret scrubbed his ear with one paw. {Snotface,} the animal corrected. He turned, arching his whiskers in the direction of the felted cube. {Sneaky Pete asleep. Nest through there.}
“Ah, sorry about that.”
She turned back to the preservation unit, but Snotface wasn’t done.
{Harper visit?}
“Sorry, little dude, I can’t just yet. I have work to do.”
{Work, work, work,} the ferret sighed.
Harper’s lips twitched at the disgust in the creature’s mental tone.
When she didn’t respond, he upped his game.
{Bored, bored, bo-ored. Open door?} Snotface’s voice was hopeful.
Harper glanced around at the lab and then back down at the ferret. “Something tells me they don’t exactly let you roam around in here unsupervised. Not with all of the chiral samples they’re working on.”
{Not unsupervised,} Snotface reasoned. {You here.}
Amusement flared at his words. She’d learned on the return trip from Luyten’s Star how futile it was to argue against ferret logic.
Steeling herself, she shook her head. “Nope, sorry, guy. But if you behave yourself, I’ll let you in on a little secret. The chief warrant’s here, too.”
{Hyer? Hyer? Where?} Snotface stretched to his full height, palms patting the transparent door that separated them. {Shiny blue! Wanna see!}
She laughed at the ferret’s enthusiasm. {Hey, Chief,} she told Katie, {you have a fan down here, asking about you.}
{Awww, they remember me?}
Harper chuckled. {And your earring.}
{Tell ‘em I’ll come up and see them when we’re done with this mess. Chief’s honor.}
Snotface patted the door more insistently. {Open! Need see Hyer now!}
“Patience,” Harper said with a smile. “I’ll be in to see you in a minute, okay?”
{No fun, no fun,} he complained.
“You want fun?” She lifted a brow. “The chief with the sparkly blue earring says she’ll come for a visit soon, but only if you behave.”
The ferret dropped to a crouch, head tilted as if considering her words. Harper took that for compliance, and turned back to the unit, her focus once more on the job.
The samples were in a special case sectioned off within the preservation unit. It, too, required her credentials to gain access.
Well, I can’t fault them for their security. How in the Suns of Sirius was Leah able to bypass all of this encryption to get to the vials?
She reached for the first one, and she and Katie began the tedious process of manually cross-referencing Leah’s list against what was in the case.
{Okay, so far, nothing’s in there that shouldn’t be there,} Katie summarized as Harper reached the final row.
By the end, they’d identified three missing vials, but had only found one that shouldn’t be there.
She reached once more for the one with the mysterious serial number. {And you’re sure it doesn’t match anything from L4, either, right?}
{Nope.} Katie sounded positive. {That vial in your hand isn’t in the system anywhere. Far’s I can tell, it shouldn’t exist.}
As Harper’s palm wrapped around it, she thought she could feel a difference in the label.
{Hang on. I think….}
She pulled it out to examine it more closely. Running her thumb against the label’s seam, she pried a bit of it away. {Yeah, this label’s thicker than the others. I think it’s not on the list because it’s a fake label. Hang on, let me see if I can pull it back to see what’s underneath….}
{Be careful,} Katie cautioned. {If we go by Leah’s notes, that thing’s likely from L4.}
{Almost have it….} Harper wiggled her thumbnail deeper into the groove she’d made, and the label began to peel back. “Gotcha,” she murmured.
So intent was she on her discovery, she didn’t hear the door that separated the lab from the ferrets’ quarters open. Nor did she hear the soft scurrying sounds of ferret feet as they crossed to the preservation unit.
Tiny paws grabbed hold of her trousers and began to climb. Harper shrieked, the vial slipping through her fingers to crash against the floor. In the next instant, an alarm began to sound, and an ES field slammed into place, isolating her and the ferret inside.
Harper stumbled back, her foot slipping in her haste, and she went crashing to the floor.
Snotface quickly scrambled to her shoulders, his tail wrapping around her neck. {Oh no, oh no,} he snuffled into her ear. The ferret quivered as the shrill alarm continued to sound.
{Harper? Harper!}
Katie’s voice rang inside her head, but Harper was too busy trying to figure out her next move to respond.
Her gaze raced around the room, looking for something, anything she could use to isolate the vial, lying two meters away. Spying a small transparent case, she scrambled to her feet, snatched it off the bench, and slammed it down on top of the specimen.
Tiny paws patted her cheek. {You make noise stop now?} the ferret asked anxiously.
Harper stared down at her hands holding the transparent case in place. A part of her mind observed distantly that they were trembling.
She reached up with one hand to comfort the creature, murmuring to him quietly. Inside, her gut was quaking every bit as much as the ferret was.
Katie’s voice cut in once more. {So help me, Kinsley, if you don’t answer….}
{I’m here. Sorry. There’s…been an accident.}
{What do you mean? What kind of accident?} The chief’s voice was sharp.
Harper gave a shaky laugh, but there wasn’t much humor behind it. {Take a look.}
Her optics had recorded the serial number underneath the fake label right before she dropped it. She sent the image to Katie.
{Ohhhhhhh shit.}
Harper silently agreed.
The vial lying underneath that clearsteel case didn’t belong to this lab. It was an L4 pathogen.
DAMAGE CONTROL
Medical Department, CID
Montpelier, Ceriba
Gabe scrolled through the data the sweeper bots had gathered from Leah Harris’s office once last time before swiping the holoscreen off. As he suspected, they’d found nothing out of the ordinary.
Wanting to compare notes with Addy’s findings, he left the room in medical that he’d temporarily commandeered, and went in search of her. They nearly collided as she bolted from the exam room that held Leah Harris’s body.
“What’s going on?” he asked as she sped past.
“Containment breach!”
“What?”
Shock held him immobilized for a brief instant, and then he turned and raced after her. He caught up to her at the lifts.
She paced in front of the doors like a caged lion, tension coiled in her compact frame. Gabe realized the woman before him was the same one he’d seen on deGrasse: a chief surgeon who took charge, barking orders like a drill instructor laying into greenie recruits. This woman was focused, at the tip of the spear, ready to engage.
Gabe also suspected she’d cut down anyone who got in her way.
“Talk to me, Addy. What kind of breach? Where?”
The lift doors opened, and he stepped in beside her.
She met his eyes as she input their destination. “It’s Harper. She’s been exposed to a pathogen.”
“How bad?”
The doors of the lift closed, the brushed metal surface blurring their reflections. Even so, he could see her frown.
&
nbsp; “I won’t know until I get up there.” Her voice was brusque, distracted.
“Pathogen,” he repeated. “She wouldn’t have been in L3 or L4 unless she suspected that’s where the stolen vials were taken from. That’s not good news.”
“It’s worse than that.” Addy turned to face him, expression grim. “She wasn’t in one of those labs. The spill occurred in an L2 lab.”
Gabe’s shock must have shown on his face.
Addy pointed. “That was my reaction, too. L2 has no pathogens. I don’t know how it got there, but sensor readings don’t lie.”
Gabe worked his jaw as he considered how this might have happened. “I think it’s time we lock that SI down,” he said. “I’ll go find Hyer and see what she can glean from his code.”
The lift doors opened onto the Project Rufus wing, and Gabe held up a hand.
“Addy, wait.”
Her head snapped to the side, anger flashing in her eyes at the presumed delay, but she held her tongue as he stepped out and kept pace with her.
“Is there anything else I can do to help?”
The captain shook her head as they raced past her office, toward the second checkpoint that separated the L2 labs from the rest of the floor.
“Let me see what she’s been exposed to and get her the antigen,” she called out over her shoulder. “Then we’ll figure out how in hell this thing got loose.”
He came to a stop, shooting her a quick salute before turning to retrace his steps. He paused when an alert flashed on his overlay. When he saw who was on the other end, he ducked into Addy’s office and locked it behind him.
Toggling the room’s privacy function, he took a seat as he accepted the transmission from Duncan Cutter.
{Sir. What can I do for you?}
The director’s voice was grim. {You can find my niece for me, Agent Alvarez. Sam’s missing.}
* * *
Addy had used her wire to trigger the L2 checkpoint, sending her credentials on ahead so that she could hit the doors at a dead run. Slipping through the moment they parted far enough to give her access, she sprinted for the lab where the containment breach alert flashed.
Her eyes went straight to the figure huddled on the floor behind the ES field as she came to a stop.
“Harper?” she called out, as one hand reached for the hazmat locker inset into the wall beside the lab’s entrance.
The analyst looked up. “It was an accident,” she said. “He didn’t mean to….”
Her voice trailed off, and her head lowered.
Addy's eyes followed, and she saw the small form Harper held in her arms. A quick glance over at the habitat where the ferrets lived showed her an open door, and she could guess what had happened.
“He figured out how to unlock it.”
Harper nodded. “He’s still breathing. Will he be okay?”
Harper looked back up, and Addy could see the woman’s eyes were glassy with fever. As she watched, a small trickle of blood began seeping from Harper’s nose.
“Quickly, tell me what happened.”
Harper swiped at her nose absently and nodded toward the preservation unit. “I was cross-referencing the serial numbers to see what was missing, and came across a number that didn’t match. I’d pulled the vial out to examine it, when Snotface started climbing my leg. I hadn’t heard him come in, and he startled me. I dropped it.”
Addy had donned one of the protective suits while Harper talked. Slipping her left hand into the medical bracer she’d brought with her from medical, she ordered the suit to power up. Its electrostatic properties were similar to those of a drakeskin suit, but in reverse. When triggered, it shed unwanted material like a dog shaking water from its coat.
She had the suit handshake with the ES field and stepped forward, allowing it to envelop her.
Harper watched, her hand coming up once more to wipe at her nose. When she noticed it came back bloody, she looked up, eyes wide. “Captain?” she whispered.
Addy held up a calming hand. “It’s okay, I’m here. We’ll get through this together.”
She knelt beside Harper and cycled her medical bracer into diagnostic mode. Resting it against the analyst's neck, she injected a swarm of symptom checker nano, and then withdrew samples for the bracer to analyze.
“Tell me more about that vial over there,” Addy ordered as she moved the bracer over the ferret’s flank and began treating him.
Harper moved her hands away from Snotface to give Addy room to work.
“The label felt thicker than the others,” she said, “so I started pulling on it to see if I could expose the label underneath. I caught a glimpse before I dropped it. The number sequence begins with L4.”
Addy nodded.
Telemetry had begun to filter in for both Harper and the ferret. It confirmed her initial assessment: symptoms indicated a hemorrhagic virus.
“Let’s see if it’ll tell us what’s in you, then.”
Addy moved to the transparent case, bending to study the vial. She’d loaded the list of chiral virus pairs from the L4 labs on her way here and knew there were variants of Marburg, Lujo, and Sargon being studied. She was betting one of them was contained in that vial.
She lifted the case covering the vial, and Harper gasped.
“What are you doing?”
As she examined the label the analyst had begun to pull away, Addy explained, “I need this serial number to confirm….”
She found the number on the list and breathed a soft sigh of relief.
“It’s a Sargon variant,” she said, “And it’s one of the chiral pairs.”
She crossed to the nearest lab station and reached into the cabinet that hung above it for a sterile dish.
“Is that bad?” Harper’s voice was shaking.
“No,” Addy said, looking up with a quick smile. “It’s good, actually.”
She poured the vial’s contents into the dish. Along with the liquid came a second, inner vial.
She lifted it and showed it to Harper. “Every chiral pair we cloned had a secondary cylinder, tucked inside the non-chiral container. Inside this second vial is the virus’s antigen.”
She upended the sealed cylinder, pressing its lid into an ampoule socket on her bracer. Once the antigen was fully loaded, Addy returned to Harper’s side. Kneeling down on the floor beside her, she ran her fingers through the holographic readout that hovered just above her bracer-clad forearm.
“It’s loaded in here now. Let’s get it inside you, shall we?”
Her wire’s connection to the bracer allowed her to mentally prioritize the nano delivery system and dispense the antigen first to where it was most needed within Harper’s body. Once she injected Harper, she repeated the process for the ferret.
Harper's gaze followed Addy's hand as she injected Snotface with the antigen.
“Will he live?” she asked.
Addy smiled reassuringly. “You’ll both be fine. It’ll take a little bit for the medical nano to fully repair the damage the virus inflicted on both of you, so no strenuous activity for a few days, okay?”
The analyst nodded, stroking the ferret’s fur. Addy reached for a tissue and handed it to her.
As the analyst wiped the blood from her face and hands, Addy asked, “You said you identified two of the missing vials?”
“Yes. All but two of the samples from this level have been accounted for, so I think it’s safe to say that two of the stolen vials were from here.”
“So that leaves two that were not,” the captain reasoned, glancing down at the spill staining the floor. “Do you have any idea how this got in here?”
The analyst nodded with a bit more energy than she’d had moments ago, and Addy was happy to see her color improving. But when she moved as if to stand, Addy placed a restraining hand on her shoulder.
“Not just yet,” she advised.
Harper nodded and settled back down to the floor, her gaze straying to the spill. “As we suspected, Leah Harris alt
ered Dave’s programming,” she told Addy. “Her orders from Akkadia were to obtain L4 vials, or they’d kill her brother.”
“Her brother? That’s a pretty strong incentive.”
Harper looked pensive. “In a way, it was very brave of her to try to substitute L2 vials by placing fake L4 labels on them,” she said. “I think it was her intent to send something a lot less dangerous out the door. It would have worked, too, except for one thing.”
“What’s that?” Addy asked.
“He glitched.”
“He? You mean Dave?”
Harper nodded. “Yeah, he glitched like he did in your office, right in the middle of carrying out her orders. When he froze, I think Leah sent the order a second time. The only problem was that the command came on the heels of the first one. So when Dave unfroze, I think he executed the command twice.”
Addy nodded. “Gabe’s on his way down to meet with the chief warrant. They’re going to round up that SI and take him offline.”
Harper waved a hand. “The chief’s already done it. Dave’s base code had a self-monitoring routine running. That’s how we found the glitch that led to this.” She gestured around her.
Addy’s eyes moved back to the spilled vial. “If one L4 made it down here, then it’s possible that the other two missing vials we’ve yet to identify are also L4s.”
She saw Harper shudder. “That would be… awful.”
Addy glanced down at her bracer once more, encouraged by Harper’s rising health levels. She rose to her feet. Holding out a hand, she said, “Are you feeling well enough to stand?”
At Harper’s nod, she helped the analyst to her feet, and motioned her to the decontamination chamber, inset beside the lab’s entrance.
“Let’s get you two through decon.”
While Harper stripped and endured the chamber’s sanitization process, Addy interfaced with the lab and ordered the room’s automated systems to contain and neutralize the hazardous material.
The Chiral Protocol – A Military Science Fiction Thriller: Biogenesis War Book 2 (The Biogenesis War) Page 14