by Todd McAulty
It was the drone-jamming device. “I turned it off when Joy and Black Winter arrived,” he said.
“Glad you made such good use out of it.” I slipped it into my pocket. “We need to talk about that sick soldier. What does it mean that the plague has reached Chicago so quickly?”
“It means we need antivirus. And very quickly.”
“You think it’s spreading faster than we thought?”
“Perhaps. Difficult to be certain.”
“Does this mess up our timetable? Is there still time to stop this, if we can deliver the antivirus on time?”
Sergei raised his hand in a calming gesture. “Do not panic. Stay focused.”
I bit back my first response. In the last few hours I’d faced certain arrest, the monstrous Orbit Pebble, and being shot at in the dark. And none of it unnerved me as much as this plague. When it was hundreds of miles away in Indiana, I could cope with it. But now it was right here, at our doorstep. Was there any real way to stop this god-awful thing? Or were we just fooling ourselves?
“There must be something we should be doing,” I said.
“We are doing it. We must not become distracted. Focus on reactor. Finish job.”
Yes. I nodded. Sergei was right. “What will happen to him? The soldier?” I asked.
“He will be brought to nearest AGRT medical facility.”
“Where is that? Here? In the hotel?”
“Da.”
“Is that safe?”
Sergei shook his head. “Nyet.”
“Then what the hell are they doing, bringing him here?”
“All information on plague has been suppressed by military intelligence. Officially, small outbreak in Indiana has been fully contained. Soldiers and most medical personnel are unaware of true danger.”
“My God, Sergei. If he’s contagious . . .”
Sergei sipped his coffee quietly. “He is certainly contagious.”
“Then why are we sitting here? Sergei, we have to stop them, before they bring an infected soldier here. There are hundreds of people in this hotel, and none of them have a goddamn clue what they’re up against. We have to—”
Sergei raised his hand again. “Stop. There is no point.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I realized I was shouting, but I couldn’t help myself. “We have to protect ourselves. We have to protect everyone in the hotel—”
“And what about soldier?”
That stopped me. “The soldier? Sergei, come on . . . If he’s got the plague, there’s an eighty percent chance he’s dead already.”
“And there is twenty percent chance he will survive. Much less, if he does not have medical attention.”
“He’s—”
“He is my patient.” Sergei’s eyes flashed, and his palm slapped the table. A few folks at nearby tables glanced over at us briefly before returning to their breakfasts.
“You would let him die?” Sergei asked. His eyes pinned me to my seat.
“No. No, of course not. But . . .”
Sergei lowered his voice. “I understand your fear. I do. But this soldier . . . letting him die will not stop plague. It is here now. We must face this bravely. And we must not forget our duty.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Of course.” I felt ashamed of my outburst, of displaying such naked fear in front of Sergei after all we’d been through together. “But . . . but we have to be smart, right?”
“Da.” Sergei nodded grimly.
“You’ll quarantine the soldier?”
“Of course. We will do our best. But we are not Level One biocontagion facility. And that is what this disease requires.”
I took a deep breath, forced myself to think calmly, rationally. To think like Sergei. “Ignorance among the soldiers and the other medical staff is our greatest enemy,” I said. “We have to spread the word, show everyone what they’re up against. Teach them how to identify it and quickly isolate the infected.”
“Now you are thinking.” Sergei looked pained. “But we cannot.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Hayduk.”
“Hayduk? What has that bastard got to do with—”
No sooner were the words out of my mouth than I realized what Sergei was saying. “Of course,” I said. “Hayduk is on the alert for anyone who contradicts the official narrative of the virus.”
“Correct. Yesterday, military intelligence arrested Venezuelan surgeon general and his staff after they broadcast Thibault’s lethality assessment and outbreak forecast to AGRT medical staff. Several other medical teams have gone quiet—arrested or silenced, I do not know.”
“My God,” I said. “This is a carefully orchestrated campaign of terror—to silence the entire AGRT medical community.”
“Da.”
“What about Thibault—is she okay?”
“For now. Surgeon general did not identify her as source of forecast. But mention of disease has been completely scrubbed from all official AGRT communications. Officially, it does not exist.”
“Unbelievable. What about unofficial channels?”
“They are still active. Thibault continues to issue private reports. Surgeon general’s broadcast was risky, but also effective—there are now nearly a dozen teams across four sectors covertly working on cure for virus. But Hayduk is not finished. He will surely track them down, one by one, and render them ineffective.”
“And if we start publicly alerting the soldiers and medical staff to the danger of the virus here in the hotel . . .”
“Hayduk will surely do the same to us. He will shut down reactor.”
I rubbed my face, feeling three days of stubble. “Shit.”
“So we must remain silent,” Sergei said. “And finish our work. Everything depends on reactor.”
“Yeah,” I said, resigned. “I get it.”
Sergei leaned back in the booth. “Now, you.”
“What do you mean? I already told you my story.”
“No. You did not explain why you are not under arrest.”
“Ah,” I said. “You mean Van de Velde.”
“Yes. She saw your face in tunnels?”
“Oh, yes.”
“She could have had you arrested as soon as you made it back to hotel.”
“I was expecting her to, to be honest.”
“But she did not?”
I told Sergei what happened when I met Van de Velde outside the command center. He chewed on that for a while.
“Why did she not take bodies of fallen soldiers with her when she retreated this morning?” he asked at length.
“Because they were under fire by an Orbit Pebble, for one thing. She’d been ambushed, she didn’t know the extent of the danger, and her first duty was to get her wounded the hell out of there.”
“And are you truly foolish enough to return to tunnels with this sergeant?”
“She’s already seen me without the mask. She knows who I am. I can’t make it any worse.”
Sergei clearly disagreed. “You can make worse. She said she would not reveal your identity, yes?”
“It looks that way, yeah.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Because I saved her life, maybe? She obviously cares about her men, and I stopped the Orbit Pebble from filling them full of bullets.”
Sergei seemed unimpressed. “She is an officer in the AGRT. You are a man in an American combat suit and obviously a spy. Even if what you say is true, every time you see her, you risk that she changes her mind. You should get rid of suit, as soon as possible.”
“No argument there.”
“And avoid Sergeant Van de Velde. You should leave her alone.”
“I already promised that I’d meet her. In about ninety minutes.”
“You should not be involved with Venezuelan military.”
“I’m involved with the Venezuelan military every damn day. I share a hotel with three hundred soldiers. I can’t avoid it, so I might as
well interact with them on my own terms.”
“Her squad will see you. They will wonder how you have this information about tunnels.”
“Seriously, that’s what you’re worried about? None of her soldiers saw my face. Anyone with knowledge of Chicago history could know about these tunnels. It doesn’t mean I’m guilty of anything.”
Sergei wasn’t satisfied. “I think you have crush,” he said.
“On who? Van de Velde?”
“I think you find her attractive and want excuse to spend time with pretty woman.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. She hates me!”
“I did not say she likes you. I said you found her attractive.”
“You’re crazy. Look, six hours ago I came this close to getting killed, trying to keep a lethal war machine from shooting up a squad of eighteen-year-old kids. I’m not going to let that happen again. Van de Velde and I will go in, retrieve the bodies, and get out. No fuss, no shooting.”
“No more excursions with young sergeant? Maybe drinks, later?”
“God, no. Believe me, I want as little contact with her as possible.”
“That is good,” said Sergei.
I added more cream to my coffee. “She is kind of hot, though.”
“Shut up.”
“It’s the short blonde hair. And—”
“You are idiot.”
We talked a while longer, while I killed time before my meeting with Van de Velde. Sergei seemed especially interested in Stone Cloud’s robot colony. He kept grilling me about the make and nature of the machines.
“They are fascinating,” he said. “They are a failed offshoot from the Ginsberg-Slater machine genome. Did you recognize the hardware configuration?”
“No. I’m not sure they’re ‘failed.’ They’re definitely persecuted, though.”
“They are certainly on the brink of failure. The Sentient Cathedral seems invested in their extermination. If that is true, they are not likely to survive. Do they have any females?”
“I’m not sure.”
“If they have no females, the colony cannot grow. Without maintenance, the machines will fail in five to ten years, possibly sooner. If their Slater cores fail, this branch of the genome will be lost forever.”
“I don’t think they’re particularly concerned about the ongoing project to map the machine genome, as fascinating as others may find it. They have other things on their mind.”
Sergei shrugged. “Still, it would be shame to lose their cognitive record.”
“I’ll mention that next time I see them. If I ever run into them again. At this point, I just hope they’re okay, and I didn’t bring doom down on them somehow.”
“I do not think that likely. You are concerned for colony?”
“Yes—and for the Venezuelans. How do you think Perez will react to Van de Velde’s report?”
“Hard to say.”
“If Perez views them as a threat and takes action, sends soldiers into the tunnels, there’s no way it’s going to end well. There will be blood on both sides.”
“I do not think you have to worry. Perez is pragmatist. The tunnels have no strategic importance. He will take no action.”
“Take no action? Two of his men were just killed! He’ll have to do something.”
“Perez has lost men in tunnels before, remember? This is no different.”
“It is different. Now he has an identifiable threat. It isn’t just rumors anymore. Van de Velde’s report will prominently feature a hostile war machine underneath the streets of Chicago. That thing has a serial number. It’s missing from a unit somewhere. That unit’s probably going to want their Orbit Pebble back, and they’re sure as hell going to want to know why a hundred-million-dollar rational device went AWOL.” I sipped my coffee. “Come to think of it, I’d love to know why myself.”
“Yes,” Sergei admitted. “Is very odd. Why is Orbit Pebble part of robot colony? Orbit Pebbles are not Thought Machines. They do not have Slater core.”
“Any theories?”
“Perhaps. Orbit Pebbles are among the most powerful war machines ever created. They were designed to be highly independent on battlefield. There were rumors that Argentinean high command had difficulty controlling them. Most were destroyed immediately after Memphis Ceasefire.”
“I hadn’t heard that.”
“This information was not widely disseminated. Perhaps this one simply did not wish to be destroyed?”
I mulled that over. That was a little alarming, to say the least. A war machine that its creators considered too dangerous to control was hiding out under the streets of Chicago, and it had already attacked Van de Velde’s squad once. There was no guarantee I could get it to back down a second time.
“Well, it’s one more good reason to accompany Van de Velde back into the tunnels,” I said. “Maybe I can help turn down the volume on this situation. Force Van de Velde—and Perez—to see the Pebble as something that can be reasoned with instead of as just a malfunctioning war machine that needs to be destroyed.”
“You are assuming it can be reasoned with,” said Sergei.
“I reasoned with it once, I think. If I run into that thing again, it might help to know what it’s thinking. Any ideas?”
“It is not thinking about pretty girls,” said Sergei. “That makes it more logical than you.”
As our conversation went on, I asked Sergei about his research into our mutual enemy, Armitage. “Anything new?” I said.
“No, but I expect to learn more soon. I am proceeding with caution. I am accessing public databases as discreetly as possible. I found one item you may be interested in. You recall that Standing Mars was seconded to Sovereign Intelligence in Buenos Aires in 2080?”
“Yeah. And whoever it is won’t be happy that I shot the hell out of Mars and was a party to its eventual destruction. So in addition to Hayduk, I’ve doubtless got a Sovereign Intelligence on my ass now, too.”
“Then perhaps this will be good news. I have discovered the identity of the Sovereign Intelligence who was the master of Standing Mars.”
“Yeah? Who?”
Sergei mouthed the name at me from across the table. Armitage.
“Bloody hell! Are you sure?”
Sergei nodded.
“Okay,” I said, leaning back. “Okay. That’s very interesting. What does that tell us? When a Sovereign Intelligence puts an asset like Standing Mars in the field, it’s definitely trying to protect something.”
“Da. My thoughts, exact.”
“But what? What was it protecting? Hayduk? The combat suit?”
“I do not think Armitage cares about combat suit. No, it attacked you after you took something else from Colonel Hayduk.”
“The data drive? You think Armitage sent a top-of-the-line Venezuelan combat robot a thousand miles just to watch over a data drive?”
“Hayduk and Standing Mars were both very eager to retrieve it. I think, by extension, we can assume Standing Mars’s master is just as eager.”
“That means that Armitage is very interested in preventing the truth about the origin of the pathogen from coming out. Or is trying to suppress knowledge of the antivirus.”
“You are assuming that is relevant data. There are many sectors on drive we have not yet accessed.”
I chewed on that for a while. “That’s very possible. Perhaps there’s more to this disk than meets the eye. One thing’s for sure, however. I think this eliminates any doubt that Hayduk was involved in the release of the pathogen. If Armitage was behind the creation of F5-117—and sent Standing Mars to watch over Hayduk’s disk with that information—then Hayduk had to be directly involved.”
“At this point, I believe that is safe assumption, yes.”
“What’s the status on the bioreactor?”
Sergei gave me an update. It was essentially the same as Joy’s. As she had predicted, Sergei already had a solution to the power impasse and expected to solve it shortly. There was still
work to be done, but the pieces were in place—including the team necessary to make it happen.
“And officially there’s still been no announcement on the outbreaks?” I asked. “No word from Venezuelan high command?”
“No. Officially, they accept assertions from military intelligence that infection is contained and no longer threat.”
“What about Perez? Does he buy that line of bullshit? Or does he still sanction what you’re doing?”
“He cannot formally sanction project until high command provides clear direction. But unofficially, he continues to provide logistical support.”
“Does that mean he’s in our corner? Can he protect us from Hayduk?”
“Unclear. Officially, reactor project is precautionary only, in case of additional infections from Indiana outbreak. He supports this effort. And he is not hindering us.”
“All right. What about Hayduk and military intelligence? Any sign they’re sniffing around the reactor?”
“No, but that will not last. Sooner or later, Hayduk will investigate more closely. Our task is to complete extraction and deliver antivirus to Thibault before this happens.”
I couldn’t argue with that. “Four days ago, Jacaranda said the pathogen would reach critical exposure levels in twelve to fifteen days. How close are we to delivering?”
“We could have cultured antivirus in three or four days. It will take twenty-four hours to purify and convert into serum that can be administered, and ten hours to transport to Indiana.”
“Shit. That’s better than our previous window. But it’s still cutting it very, very close.”
“I believe timetable is workable. If serum works.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Infection will spread uncontrollably. Even if we perfect antivirus in fifteen days, we do not have facilities to mass manufacture. Our one chance is to stop infection before it reaches critical exposure levels.”
One good thing about drop-dead deadlines: they bring a certain clarity of focus. “That means everything depends on getting the bioreactor functioning in the next few hours. And making sure Hayduk doesn’t discover how close we are before then.”
“Reactor has passed preliminary design tests, and construction is almost complete. I am more concerned about Dr. Thibault’s safety. She is critical to our success now.”