Season of the Harvest

by Michael R. Hicks

  “Shit,” Renee muttered, smacking her head with her hand before she leaned over her keyboard and started carefully typing in numbers. “I’ll bet he used a basic substitution. He wouldn’t have had time for anything really fancy. He had to do it in his head on the fly, but he could have easily replaced the letters with numbers in the sequence of the alphabet: 1 for A, 2 for B, and so on through 26 for Z.”

  The tension rose as she neared the end of the sequence, carefully double-checking the numbers as she typed.

  “Have you found anything?” a woman’s voice said.

  They looked up to see Ellen and Tan standing there.

  “We think we found the pass phrase for the file Sheldon super-encrypted,” Naomi told her, her voice nearly shaking with excitement.

  Jack kept his own expression neutral as he carefully watched Ellen. She smiled at Naomi’s words, but there were clear lines of worry around her eyes.

  “Shit!” Renee spat. “That doesn’t work, either. Damn you, Sheldon, I thought the world of you, but if you were standing here right now, I’d kick you in the balls.”

  “Maybe we’ll never know what the pass phrase is,” Ellen said quietly.

  “Yes, we will,” Jack said evenly. “Renee, he knew this would eventually wind up in your lap. I know in my gut that quote is my piece of the key. It has to be. Whatever he did to change it, he knew you’d be able to figure it out, either from something that the two of you knew together, or some bunch of mathematical mumbo-jumbo. But you can solve this. I know it.”

  “Jesus, kid,” she said, looking up at him, an expression of wonder on her face, “I think you’re right. It’s like a two-part key. Even if they got hold of you and got the pass phrase – that you didn’t even know at the time – it wouldn’t help them without knowing whatever else Sheldon had done to it. But I can’t for the life of me think of what it could be.”

  “I didn’t either, remember?” Jack said.

  “Why wouldn’t the harvesters just destroy the file if they got it?” Tan asked. “Why should they bother trying to figure out the key to open it, when Kempf must already know what it contains?”

  “It’s not the harvesters Sheldon was worried about,” Jack said quietly, looking at Naomi. “If that was the case, he wouldn’t have super-encrypted this particular file. It was meant to keep one or more of us from seeing it.”

  Renee sat back, stunned. “Jack,” she said slowly, “do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

  “Yes, I do,” he said firmly. “The harvesters have someone here on the inside.”

  “We already had this discussion,” Naomi said coldly, “and I thought we had agreed to let it go.”

  Jack held her gaze until Renee spoke again.

  “I’m sorry, Naomi,” she said quietly, her eyes focused on the domed ceiling as she concentrated, “but I think Jack’s right. There’s no other explanation that fits. Sheldon would’ve stuck to the plan unless he saw a good reason to deviate from it. And he had Ellen watching his back, so...Oh, God,” she whispered, turning to stare at Ellen as she came to the same conclusion that Jack had about why Sheldon had stopped talking to Ellen in the lab.

  “What?” Ellen, cried. “You think I’m a traitor? Me?”

  “I won’t stand for this, Naomi,” Tan said fiercely as he scowled at Jack. “We risked our lives to save you, you bastard, and this is how you repay us? By accusing one of our most trusted people of treason?”

  Jack said nothing. There wasn’t much he could say. But he was gratified, in a tragic way, that he wasn’t the only one who had seen the connection between Ellen and what had happened to Sheldon.

  “That’s enough,” Naomi said icily before Tan could say anything more. “Jack, would you leave us, please? I’d appreciate it if you’d go back to your room and stay there.” She didn’t look at him.

  Feeling like he’d been slapped in the face, he exchanged a glance with Renee, who still wore a horrified expression, before he turned and silently left the command center.

  ***

  After Jack had left, Naomi had done her best to calm down Ellen and Tan, then sent them back to their room. Even though she was wanted for questioning by the FBI, Naomi planned to send her topside with Tan when his shift was up. Her photo hadn’t been circulated outside of law enforcement channels, so it was unlikely she’d be picked up as long as she stayed at the house and out of sight for a while.

  Turning her mind back to Jack, she was furious over his now-public accusation. Yet, a part of her brain had been circling around what he’d said, ruthlessly examining it for weakness, but so far had found none. She couldn’t – wouldn’t – believe that Ellen had been turned. And if she had, why had she come back? All she had to do was tell the harvesters where the base was, and they would take care of the rest. The truck park topside would have been swarming with federal agents or soldiers by now.

  “Damn you, Jack Dawson,” Naomi muttered as she shoved those thoughts aside and fought to concentrate on her work. She was examining the preliminary workups on the retrovirus, and didn’t at all like what she was seeing.

  Naomi didn’t have the resources to completely map the genome of the harvesters, but she knew enough to recognize patterns of their DNA in the retrovirus. She looked over report after report that had been put together by the research team in the short period of time they’d had to analyze the samples Sheldon had died to obtain, but all she got for her effort was a splitting headache. She was one of the best geneticists in the world, but the retrovirus and the beyond-brilliant engineering that had gone into creating it mocked her own intelligence. All the reports boiled down to one simple and chilling conclusion: without a great deal more time to study it, the only way to find out what the retrovirus did would be to infect an animal host and see what happened.

  “Vlad,” she called to an exhausted-looking young man with limp brown hair who wore a rumpled lab coat, sitting at the computer next to her, “I want you to prep one of the rhesus monkeys. Grind up one of the specimens of the corn and put it in the food. Let’s test the entire vector process from consumption to gene transcription and see what the devil this thing does.” She would much rather have done a more detailed and controlled series of experiments, but she knew that time wasn’t on their side. They had to find out what this thing was, and quickly.

  “Right away, Naomi,” he said with a thick Russian accent. After a few more mouse clicks to save what he was working on, he got up and began to shuffle toward the far side of the dome where the animal area was located.

  “And Vlad,” she called after him, “be damned sure you put it in one of the level four biosafety containment chambers. We don’t want that monkey running around loose.”

  He gulped, trying to wipe the frightened expression from his face. “Da,” he said quietly, bobbing his head in earnest agreement.

  As Vlad went to fetch the test monkey, Naomi continued to stare at the mysterious gene matrix on the screen, wondering what horrors it contained.

  ***

  Renee sat at her workstation, her mind spinning from the possibility that Ellen had been turned by the harvesters. They were good friends, and she simply couldn’t believe that Ellen had turned traitor. There was no reason for her to turn, Renee thought. What could the harvesters have offered her in exchange for Sheldon’s life, and probably for ours, as well?

  On the other hand, Renee couldn’t escape the conclusion that Sheldon had found something in the mysterious file that he hadn’t wanted to reveal to Ellen. That was based on the assumption that what Ellen had told them of Sheldon’s actions in the lab was true. Jack seemed to think it was, and Renee was inclined to go with him on that: she instinctively trusted him. But if it were true, everything they had struggled for, and their very lives, might now be in danger.

  Naomi, angry and hurt after the scene with Jack and the others, had gone to the lab to lose herself in her work, leaving Renee alone in the command center while the others worked in other parts of the complex or got
some sleep. As long as Renee had coffee, she had no problem staying awake and alert for a full twenty-four hour shift or even longer, although getting someone to spell her for a quick trip to the bathroom now and then was always a challenge.

  Speaking of challenges, she thought sourly as she stared at the screen and the mocking dialog box asking for the pass phrase for the stubbornly encrypted file, which Sheldon had named “secret.” What did you do, Sheldon? she begged her dead friend. Jack’s so sure I can figure this out, but I’ve tried everything I can think of, and–

  “Renee?”

  She looked up to find Ellen standing there, next to her workstation. The young woman’s cheeks were wet with tears. And she was holding a pistol fitted with a silencer, aimed at Renee’s chest.

  “Ellen...” was all Renee had time to say before her friend shot her twice in the chest. Her mouth forming an “O” of shocked surprise, Renee was knocked backward out of her chair, her limp body rolling to a stop near the steps to the command dais, face-down to the floor.

  “I’m so sorry,” Ellen murmured over and over as she dragged Renee’s body by the ankles into the small utility room next to the conference room.

  After making sure the door to the utility room was locked, Ellen ran to Renee’s console and brought up the security monitoring system. Taking a thumb drive from her pocket, she inserted it into the workstation’s USB port. Several keystrokes and mouse clicks later, she had electronically altered the security camera recording of Renee’s murder. Anyone who reviewed the video would see Renee at her workstation for the next fifteen minutes, after which it would show Ellen entering the command center and shooting her. The other security cameras would show what they normally did: empty tunnels and the occasional cat or two. Ellen was gambling that no one else would show up in the command center before she could get back from what she now had to do. She was fairly certain no one would: everyone had been so upset about Jack’s accusation that she was a traitor that they had all found some place or reason to be alone. No one even considered the possibility that she really was a traitor.

  Except for Jack and Renee, of course. It had broken her heart to kill Renee, but she’d had no choice. She would kill Jack, too, but there were other things she had to do first.

  She brought up the command systems for the portal elevator and blast doors, and neutralized their fail-safes. Then she did the same for the security systems in the prison where the harvester was being held. She nearly vomited at the thought of what she was doing, at what she had already done. Months ago she had released the second harvester that had been captured, but instead of trying to escape as Ellen had planned, it had tried to kill Naomi. Ellen had barely been able to cover her tracks that time. The harvesters had not been pleased with her, but Ellen had shown Kempf the security video of the battle the thing had chosen over escape, and that had mollified her and the others, whoever they might be. She hoped that this harvester, Sansone, would be smarter. She prayed it was, because Ellen knew that this was it. Not because she was afraid she would be caught, but because she was running out of time for the harvesters to fulfill their end of the bargain she had made months ago. She had sold her soul, but she knew in her heart it was a worthy cause, no matter the price.

  She finished her work on the security systems, suppressing all the alarms. Then she found the file Renee had been trying to unlock and wiped it from the network drive and the backup systems. She knew what it was, courtesy of the Kempf creature: the names and a wealth of personal information on the humans who knew the true identity of the harvesters and were considered their human servants. Kempf had told her the list was kept as a form of insurance, with updated copies kept by every harvester: should any of the humans on the list decide to turn, they had more than enough information to hunt them down. Sheldon must have seen her name when he opened it after finding it on Kempf’s laptop, which Ellen hadn’t known would be in the lab. His fate had already been sealed, for he had been Ellen’s gift to the harvesters after the one she had released had been killed in the base, but he had surprised them all. Now, she thought, no one would ever know what was in the file.

  She looked at Renee’s chair again, a sob escaping her lips as her mind replayed the sight of the older woman being flung backward by the muffled gunshots. I’m so sorry, Renee, she thought bitterly, but I didn’t have any choice. Please forgive me.

  What made Ellen feel even worse was that Renee would take the blame for everything that was about to happen. Ellen had spoofed the systems and deleted the copies of the secret harvester file under Renee’s login, and any accounting of the network’s activity would only show her hand at work. After finishing what she still had to do, Ellen would return to the command center, put Renee’s body back in the chair, and sound the alarm just after the video showed Ellen killing her brilliant friend, whom the others would believe was the true traitor.

  Biting back the hot bile that seared the back of her throat, Ellen dashed out of the command center and down the tunnel that led to the antenna silo and the harvester’s cell.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Jack paced in his room like a caged animal, fueled by anger and a sense of helplessness that he hadn’t known since he had been told of his wife’s death while he was still bedridden in Afghanistan.

  Alexander, perched on the bed, watched Jack with alert green eyes, but remained quiet in the atmosphere charged by his human’s mood. Ironically, Koshka had chosen to accompany the big cat back to Jack’s room, and Jack had taken perverse pleasure in the fact that the sleek feline had temporarily shunned Naomi.

  Naomi, Jack fumed. “Why can’t you see?” he suddenly shouted, startling both cats. Renee had made the connection with Ellen almost instantly. Naomi was so brilliant, but blinded by loyalty to her people, not believing any of them were capable of such treachery. Jack knew better: he had seen it before in Afghanistan. He had no idea what Ellen’s motives were, but he had no doubt she was dirty.

  Looking over the pathetic collection of things he had left from his former life, he saw the photo frame that Sheldon had given him. The thought that a woman, a fellow human, must have given Sheldon up to the enemy nauseated him. What made it worse was that it was probably the same person who had released the harvester that had almost killed Naomi. That this collaborator was here, being treated like a hero by the others, brought on a tide of black rage.

  You can stay here like a child who’s been put in time-out, Jack berated himself, or you can go out and try to open their eyes to what’s going on.

  “Fuckin’-A,” he snarled as he stormed out of the apartment, the two cats trailing after him before the door closed.

  Taking long, angry strides down the tunnel to the blast lock that was the gateway to the main junction, Jack tried to rein in his anger enough to confront Naomi with as much logic as he could muster. The last thing he wanted was to get into a heated shouting match, but if that’s what it took, then that’s what he’d do. He wanted some answers from Ellen, and he was going to get them. Tan might be a problem, but Jack was ready for him. He hoped.

  He swiped his badge on the panel of Blast Lock #2, and was surprised that the thick door began to open before he had entered his code or done the retinal scan. Frowning, he called to the camera and microphone mounted on the ceiling, “Renee?” Nothing. “Is anybody at the security station?”

  Again, nothing.

  That shouldn’t be, Jack thought. With a growing sense of dread, he ran the rest of the way to the main tunnel junction, encountering no one but half a dozen cats. He headed toward the command dome entrance, and was again surprised when the blast door opened just with the swipe of his badge, the retinal scanner nothing more than a shiny hunk of inert metal embedded in the wall.

  Ignoring the living quarters on the first level, Jack vaulted up the spiral staircase to the command center above.

  It was empty.

  “Shit,” Jack breathed. He knew there should always be at least one person on watch. Always. And he knew R
enee had tonight’s shift. He carefully made his way among the cubicles, then he checked out the conference room. Empty.

  He was just about to check the other door next to the conference room when he heard a voice behind him.

  “Turn around, Jack. Slowly”

  It was Naomi.

  He turned around, holding his hands away from his body. She held a .44 magnum revolver pointed at his chest. She looked at him with a devastated expression, her eyes welling with tears.

  “How long have you been here?” Naomi asked him in a wavering voice as she moved carefully toward the security workstation where Renee should have been. “And what have you done with Renee?”

  “I got here just before you did,” Jack told her, exasperated. “You must have heard me running up the stairs. I came looking for Renee, and for you. Something’s wrong, and I think Ellen’s at the heart of it.”

  “We know Ellen, Jack,” Naomi told him. “We’ve known her for years. We–”

  “For God’s sake, Naomi,” Jack shouted, “think! She’s the only link that ties everything together, from the time the last harvester escaped, to Sheldon’s death, and to whatever’s going on now. Did you notice that the security systems are screwed up? I was able to open the blast doors just with my badge!”

  “What?” she asked, the blood draining from her face. “That couldn’t happen, unless...”

  With dawning horror, she looked at Renee’s computer and the command interfaces for the security systems. They had been taken off-line. Leaning down, still keeping the gun pointed at Jack, she quickly brought up the internal surveillance systems and video feeds. Everything looked normal in the tunnels and the antenna silo where the harvester was being kept. That’s the most important thing, she thought, her mind trying to come to grips with whatever was happening. “Why would Renee do this...”

  “It wasn’t Renee, dammit!” Jack insisted. “She–”