Androcide (Intel 1 Book 5)

by Erec Stebbins

  “America will come first again! First with safety at home, neighborhoods, borders secured from terrorism. There WILL be law and order. And jobs. So many jobs. The best jobs. We’ll rebuild America. You, the forgotten men and women of America, you who work and struggle without a voice—I AM YOUR VOICE.”

  The killer sighed and pushed a button on the flatscreen. It went dark, the plastic tent quieter. “This lying windbag and his Nazi minions—another ocean of mad men, of course. They can’t even stomach the infinitesimal progress made. They will steer America deeper into the darkness. But not when I’m finished with them. And you’re going to help me change things.”

  He connected the last leads. The graphics on the monitors beeped to life, cardiograms and other data blinking in the dim light, reflecting off the wall-to-ceiling plastic around them.

  The killer continued speaking, turned away from his victim. The bearded man cast a wild look over the enclosure, yanking on the restraints again.

  “It’s all so astounding, this ass-backwards power structure in the human species.” He spun toward his captive. “Did you know the default human being is a woman?”

  The man stopped struggling. “What?”

  “It’s true. In the womb, gestation proceeds according to a female blueprint. Only the delivery of a proper cocktail of hormones and chemicals at the right developmental stages shunts the process toward a male embryo. Assuming the embryo expresses the right receptors and is otherwise receptive to the cocktail, or you get an XY female. Point is! Our species is female based. Men are only a hormonal tweak.”

  He chuckled and walked over to a table with medical tools and supplies, removing what looked like a futuristic plastic gun with clear tubes for barrels. A clear, cylindrical cartridge rested beside it.

  “What’s that for?” cried the man.

  “Of course, how could it be any other way? Think of evolution. Men are not the basis of continuation of the species. All the key biological resources are invested in women. Women possess more endurance, resistance to infectious agents, and live longer. Women harbor the miracle of the womb, the organ creating the next generation. Women produce the offspring, self-contained but for a little genetic material sexual reproduction requires be kept separately for genetic recombination.” He smiled through the distorting plastic. “Hence, men.”

  The cartridge popped as he fitted it into the jet injector. He adjusted elements on the device.

  “But we’re a bit of an afterthought. We carry genes for diversification but can do nothing with them, even if handed the complimentary genetic material. The species requires a woman to make humans. So Mother Nature neglected us, shorted us some gene copies so we are plagued with recessives in a chromosome that’s been decaying since before we were a species.”

  The naked man glared at the injector with wide eyes. “What are you going to do with that?”

  “I’ve told you. I have to sedate you to ensure the experiment can run. You are not behaving.”

  The man screamed. “Help! Somebody! Help me! He’s killing us! Help!”

  “No one can hear you down here.” A loud, pneumatic click issued from the injector. “You’re all examples of the genetic catastrophe that is the male sex. Extremes.” He turned and stared at the panicking prisoner. “Where did I find you? Under an overpass? It doesn’t matter.” He turned back to the medical device. “Without the stability of gene copies, men are prone to extremes in phenotypes, diseases, skills, retardation. Genius. Psychopathy.” He walked toward the man, who thrashed again on the gurney. Beside him, the near corpse began to hack.

  The killer paused, injector in hand, staring forward through the clear plastic in the headpiece.

  “I guess that’s the delusion. For every genius, ten homeless madmen. Nine of ten inmates in prison, a man. Developmental problems. Nearly all violent crime committed by men. Wars, rapes, torture, cruelties, stupidities on international scales—men. Ha! We pulled one epic con-job convincing ourselves we’re special. Better. Denying that our rare outliers in intelligence or skills were never paired with wisdom.” He began gesturing with the jet injector. “Like crazed warlocks we created artifacts of power and ringed our little world with weapons of destruction.” He shook his head. “Utter madness treated as a sign of superiority!”

  “Please. You don’t have to do this.”

  He killer sighed. “It’s really awful what I’m doing. But, yes, I must.” The prone figure moaned and pulled once more at the restraints. “As imperfect as it is, human intelligence is a special thing. This teeming globe has produced a seed with great potential. But evolution is messy. Millions of species now extinct. Entire genomes lost. The seed of intelligence is warped by male dominance. Fatally so. It’s turned from something that could have reached out to the cosmos into a malignancy threatening to burn its own home-world to ash.”

  He approached the gurney again, the figure on it breathing in bursts, hyperventilating.

  “We must go, we men. But good news! We can. Sperm banks the world over provide all women need to continue the species. Maybe they’ll keep some of us around for playthings, I don’t know, or to renew sperm banks. But we must go. Civilization cannot survive men much longer.” He stopped behind his captive. “And nothing is more fitting than this—one more unbalanced man like myself will ultimately be our purposeful undoing!”

  “No! You’re insane! Help!” He screamed at the plastic ceiling. “Get me out of here!”

  The killer plunged the injector into the captive’s shoulder, triggering the device. The screams reached a crescendo with a pneumatic rush.

  The figure on the gurney relaxed, his eyes swimming. The screams stopped. His breathing slowed and his eyelids dropped shut.

  The man in the biohazard suit attached the monitor leads, checked the readings, and pressed the button on the nearby television. As the voice of a newsman filled the room, the killer exited the inner chamber through a thin opening. He zippered it shut. Water rained on plastic and a pungent chlorine reek filled the air.

  “And there you have it. The candidates’ final speeches before America goes to the polls tomorrow. Polling has swung widely, with many analysts for the first time speaking of a possible upset victory by Daniel Suite, the mercurial businessman who has promised to bring an angry revolution to DC.”

  Four naked men slept beside the television and its continuing political coverage. A fifth shook and coughed up his insides into the air.

  59

  Cassandra Blues

  “We had to pull a helluva lot of strings today, Rebecca,” said Savas, the car bouncing over the false construction zone outside the Holland Tunnel. “Call in a lot of favors.”

  He’s right. And this one’s on me.

  Cohen bit her lower lip. It was her decision to put so much trust in this nobody PI. Whatever their Angel might have prophesied, however much trust the previous collaboration with Tyrell Sacker created, whatever his opinions of Gone, the weight of the decision landed on her shoulders.

  Savas hadn’t been there to make the call and INTEL 1 had looked to Cohen. That alone shocked her. All these years, Savas led. He led the group out of the ashes when the terrorists of Mjolnir had nearly burned them to the ground. But here, in this clandestine, underground labyrinth created by President York, her standing grew beside his, making them equals in the eyes of others. Part of that boosted her ego. But on days like today, when she made the critical calls in the middle of chaos, the weight of that responsibility crushed her.

  “We ruffled a lot of feathers. Nothing like a forced exhumation to win friends and influence your uncle.”

  “Dylan,” fired Savas. “Tombstone Blues.”

  In the backseat of the town car, Cohen laughed, grasping his hand. The muscles were tense. “Our credit’s still good. Until we max it out.”

  “Don’t get too cocky. The background check on this Grace Gone is littered with red flags.”

  “I know.”

  “Call me a coward, but this look
s like a shaky horse to bet on. She is not who she pretends to be. The parents are ciphers. Documents forged. Maybe it’s nothing worse than illegal immigration. But there’s a coverup.”

  “I trust her. Gut feeling,” said Cohen. “Besides, weren’t you impressed?”

  “She’s impressive. But we’ve got impressive covered. Francisco is impressive.”

  “Like a prayer Hulk.”

  “Angel is impressive. You’re pretty damn impressive. I’ll never keep up with you when the data’s coming in.”

  Cohen shook her head. “I’ve got nothing on Gone. Never seen anything like it. I’d swear she’s cheating. No-one can think that fast. That sharp.”

  “And so what if Miss Smarty-Pants is right? What if there’s some virus cooked up by a serial killer in the pocket of an international conspiracy? For God’s sake, what would Nemesis want with this?”

  Cohen shrugged. “Her money’s here, used for these medical supplies. The link is clear.”

  “But what’s her strategy? Bilderberg was about control. This would unleash, what?” He looked at her with wide eyes. “Chaos?”

  “If Gone is right, fifty percent of the world’s population dies. The CDC’s simulations are very rough. They don’t know how contagious it might be. But within months to years, barring unforeseen immunity or treatments, most of the men on the planet could be gone.”

  “Bad news for me.”

  “Bad news for the species. Civilization can’t take a fifty-percent haircut and function. Maybe we could do without the politicians,” she grinned, “but men are integral to society at every level. Skills, numbers. Women can’t retrain in time. Automation is not extensive enough. Catastrophe.”

  “So what’s an ex-Bilderberger trying to destroy the world for? They want to run it!”

  Cohen shrugged. “Nemesis was one part of Bilderberg. Maybe she was an outlier, changed her motivations when their whole system collapsed.” Her mouth formed a thin line. “You remember the Amazon rumors about her?”

  Savas scoffed. “What? That she surrounds herself only with women bodyguards and advisers, has beefcake models as sex-toys? Not very reliable. The sources were international criminals.”

  Cohen shrugged again. “Might fit. Maybe she thought they could ride out the chaos. Establish some gendered ruling class.”

  Savas stared at her. “Listen to us. This is crazy. It’s like some episode of a sci-fi series.”

  “I’d have thought so too,” she said as the car entered the passage along the side of the Holland Tunnel. “But an androcidal virus? That used to be crazy, too.”

  “Androcidal.” Savas shook his head. “Now there’s a word.”

  “Maybe Angel used it? Before she left. I don’t remember.” Cohen tapped his knee. “You’ve been quiet about Angel. You know something.”

  “You said it was about the Eunuch Maker.”

  “Yes, but there was more. Why would she go to ground because of the Eunuch Maker?”

  Savas sighed. “I’m not sure. But I think it goes back to the beginning when Larry was putting INTEL 1 together. We’ve talked about this. How he got unstable people stabilized by the missions.”

  “Yes. A crazy working theory.”

  “Effective, as he implemented it,” said Savas. “Each one of us had our event. He was such a genius finding ways channel it to something hyper-productive.”

  “And?”

  “We know most of ours. Mine was Thanos. Mad John Savas and all. Yours was the bombing, your family in Israel. Frank’s, God rest his soul, was battlefield trauma. And on and on. We knew each of our traumas.”

  Cohen tensed. “Except for Angel.”

  “Except for Angel.” He frowned. “Larry never talked. Angel never talked. After what happened with Anonymous, I think Francisco and Sara might know a little more. But something happened to her. Something dark. So dark Larry scrubbed it from the records, even. Fawkes made that clear.”

  “What then? You think it relates to the Eunuch Maker?”

  “Somehow. That’s my only guess.”

  “Another monster with cages.”

  “What?” asked Savas.

  “One of the last things she said. She said I can’t face another monster with cages. Something about dissections.”

  “Jesus.”

  “God, poor Angel. I hope we’re way off.”

  He looked at her. “You said there was more.”

  “She mentioned the election. Daniel Suite in particular. Said a darkness was coming.”

  “If he wins? I think she’s right.”

  Cohen shivered. “I have to say—this election is the first time I’ve felt afraid for my country. Afraid of my country. I don’t understand how so many people support such a monster.”

  “Fear’s powerful. So is anger,” said Savas. “Hell, after 9/11, I might have voted for him on the single issue of demonizing Islam and Muslims. You remember what Mjolnir wanted. God! I struggled. Husaam didn’t just save millions in Mecca. He saved my damn soul.”

  Cohen gripped his arm. “I will always be grateful to him. You were wounded. Your hate came from terrible, terrible pain. Muslim terrorists killed your son. Why do people hate so much? What’s their reason?”

  “On the ground, hate is hate. Origin stories won’t matter to those who get hurt.”

  “Well, Suite’s supporters don’t stop with Muslims. It’s Mexicans and Jews, too. Death threats since Suite started retweeting white supremacists. Every week I hear from some friend or relative.”

  “You never said—”

  “We’d enough on our plate. Nothing’s happened. Some were bogus. Some weren’t. But if he wins?”

  “He can’t win.” Savas smiled. “We just voted against him. Got my sticker to prove it.”

  “God, I hope he doesn’t. Because if he does, he and those white nationalists take over. And INTEL 1, everyone in it, you and me—we’ll belong to them.”

  60

  Y-Linked

  Grace Gone hunched over her laptop screen, her office dark. A weak glow filtered through the foyer from outside. The blue from her screen overpowered the orange street lights, the room icy. She leaned forward, her hair creating a veil obscuring her features. The clacks of her fingers pounding the keyboard echoed in the room.

  The Electoral College tally auto-refreshed in a small corner of the screen. Over the hours the numbers beside Daniel Suite increased. At this early hour in the morning, he’d netted three hundred and six, surpassing the two-hundred and seventy required. Suite was going to be the next President of the United States.

  Gone focused elsewhere. Maps of DNA, annotated with restriction enzyme sites, promotors, coding regions, and distal regulators sat alongside raw sequencing results. Thousands of base-pairs flitted across the screen, computer aligned and highlighted by similarity and divergence.

  She didn’t know how INTEL 1 did it. She’d asked for the buried body, asked for sequencing from several tissues, ask for quality labs. They’d delivered. She rejoiced that despite handling and decomposition, the viral genome was still present in decayed tissues of the inmate who’d thrown herself off a roof.

  She hadn’t anticipated that the brave new world of gender identity would clash so potently with exploited genetic constraints in a case she was investigating. As she analyzed, part of her brain tried to imagine the struggle of an XY man to overcome societal and physiological barriers. She tried to empathize with the struggle of surgeries and hormone treatments, the family shaming and abandonment by friends. All to become the woman she was.

  Confusing. But the complicated neural structures of gender identity were no match for the reality of physiology in some contexts. The case of a deadly synthetic virus designed to exploit the male genotype was just such a context. And the stakes were life and death.

  Poor Dawn Lodmell who’d participated in a seemingly innocuous donation of blood to the science project of Dr. Linda Richards. A project others informed her would benefit women in the development of new c
ontraceptives. A benign donation with no risk, simply the removal of a few milliliters of blood for testing purposes.

  Except the researcher taking the blood was anything but benign. The researcher violated her trust, injecting a synthetic virus into the unsuspecting woman. He used all the inmates as lab rats to test his man-killer, to make sure that it had no significant effect on women.

  But how do you define woman?

  If by genotype, the killer’s virus worked as designed. It didn’t kill women. But Lodmell was not genetically a woman. Lodmell was a genetic male who’d resculpted her form toward a female biotype. But she couldn’t change her chromosomes or stop Dyer’s exploitation of them.

  And so Lodmell died. Horrifically. In an experimental failure the killer couldn’t anticipate and that he was lucky didn’t reveal his plans.

  The black veil of hair moved as she leaned into the chair, resting her head on the top of the backrest. She closed her eyes, exhausted. But her mind couldn’t rest.

  Y-linked genes. Male-specific genetic regulators. DNA elements occurring nowhere in the female genome. The virus could only activate its deadly plan, produce the proteins for replication and the horrific damage to the host organism, when it was inside cells with a Y-chromosome. A synthetic, deterministic, male plague.

  Of man-made origin.

  Man-made. The ironies sidelined by the monstrosity, and the fact that Gone knew exactly which man made them. The clues were written in the language of nucleic acid base-pairing, in the genome sequences of the deadly virus. In the common markers of modern molecular alchemy produced by genetic manipulation.

  The killer could only be a trained molecular biologist, a skilled artist with genetic material, and an engineer of genomic structures. He’d taken elements of Richards patented contraceptive virus and created a Frankenstein chimera with some of the deadliest viral genomes in the world. He produced a virus capable of infecting both men and women, but that would only reproduce, that could only release the devastating armament of tissue liquifying factors, in a male genome.