The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  He’d tried to sleep on the floor several times in the past two or three days, but he couldn’t turn his mind off. Yet he also couldn’t focus his thoughts. He blamed the nanobots for that. Except for the itching, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt so good physically or been so frustrated at his inability to act on that feeling. The nanobots acted like a fountain of youth, giving him increased energy and a healthy appetite such as he hadn’t possessed in ages. He bounced; he paced—wall to sink, turn, sink to wall, turn. Was that just the nanobots?

  The coveralls they’d given him to replace his clothes—which they’d feared might contain microtechnology that could aid an escape—contained a sweat and odor absorbent that kept him reasonably fresh. But the isolation in this cell on the top floor of the CINTEP building tormented Elias more than he would have guessed possible. For the few days he’d been locked up, he’d seen no one and no one had spoken to him. Nutri-water came from a tube that dangled from the ceiling. Energy bars slipped one at a time through a window in the door, randomly. He hadn’t received one for hours.

  He hammered on the door and yelled, “Hey, anybody there?”

  Nothing—just a slight echo.

  “Frustrating, isn’t it?” a raspy voice spoke from behind him. He spun around but no one was there. That voice, though, sounded like Eldridge Cunningham. Was Elias just imagining it or did one of his jailers know about the Cunningham incident? Were they playing with him, feeding him drugs in the food or water, or was he going crazy?

  Scratching his arms and legs, he reached around and clawed at his back. Goddamn nanobots! They were both gift and curse. He hated himself for feeling better, knowing he’d never give up the nanobots now. The itching was merely the cost of his rejuvenated body.

  He shadowboxed briefly, dancing left and right, clumsy but with vitality. Why couldn’t he concentrate on anything? Was that what had happened to Curtik? Was that why Zora had been able to take over the Moon?

  He ceased his movements, came to a complete rest, determined to fight the anxiety. It’s nothing more than a hallucination, he told himself—a false feeling amplified by the nanobots. Yet his breaths became more rapid and ragged as he stared at the walls.

  “I did what had to be done,” he said to the cameras. “I acted in the best interests of the United States—hell, the world. You know that. Do you really believe I deserve to be imprisoned?”

  His words echoed.

  “Me too,” the raspy voice said.

  “Shut up!” Elias said. “You’re not real. I’m just exhausted.”

  He moved to the cot and lay on his back. As the bed poked and prodded him, he stared at the central camera. Was anyone watching at this particular moment? Could he kill himself like Cunningham had? No. He refused to succumb to their tortures. The bed is comfortable, he told himself. This is like a massage. And when it pokes me in the middle of the back, it scratches my itch.

  A familiar tiny click came from the screen on the wall. He directed his attention to it just as the screen lit up. This time the audio came through so softly he almost couldn’t hear it; other times it had blared so loudly it gave him a headache. As usual, they showed him news channel summaries of the previous day’s events. Scenes of destruction played on the screen. Was this their way of blaming him for what was happening or were they preparing him for interrogation?

  “What do you want to know?” he yelled. “Just ask. I have no secrets.”

  A lie. Although he’d kept President Hope informed of much that he’d done, he hadn’t told her everything.

  “Why not just pump me full of truth juice and be done with it?” Elias knew he shouldn’t be speaking. He ought to have more self-control than that. “Or do you have a sadistic streak?”

  “Like your sadism?” the invisible Cunningham asked.

  “I told you to shut up.”

  “I bet they drugged you,” Cunningham said. “How much you wanna bet?”

  Elias ignored the voice and closed his eyes, wincing as sandpaper lids scraped his eyeballs. It had to be the nanobots, devilish little machines zipping back and forth across his eyelids until the pressure built to an uncontainable explosion. He opened his eyes. Damn! His stomach growled a protest. He thought about banging on the door again. No, that was what they wanted. They wanted to break him. He could outlast them.

  He just had to accept the fact that he was utterly powerless. Turning his attention to the screen, he watched every story. India continued to dig out from the effects of a series of bombings in Hyderabad, while China cleaned up Guangzhou, hit by retaliatory strikes, and ramped up preparations for a full-scale war against India, while simultaneously blaming the United States for the Las-cannon strikes it had endured.

  Bangkok had switched from rescue to recovery efforts following the massive strike by the orbiting Las-cannon. Dozens of other cities, also hit by Las-cannon strikes, struggled with their own debris. The skies around the world had become increasingly dark with soot and ash residue. Temperatures had already plummeted seven degrees on average. Water supplies, now largely contaminated, led environmentalists across the globe to call for U.N. leadership, while the Secretary General of the U.N. jetted from city to city pleading for humanitarian efforts from nations more focused on their own problems than the world’s.

  None of this was going the way Elias had imagined it. The world’s shortsighted leaders continued to engage in self-preserving nationalism. “You people still don’t get it,” he yelled.

  In America, civil unrest continued its rise, mostly in reaction to shortages or price hikes. Every state had called out the National Guard to keep order. Curfews had been instituted throughout the country. Local terrorist attacks had spiked too. And many hospital emergency rooms had filled to overflowing, igniting fisticuffs and worse over scarce medical resources. One hospital in Seattle had lines going around the block, while police officers and firefighters kept order and helped with triage.

  The broadcast ended with an update on the Susquehanna Virus. The network anchor reported that seventy-eight Americans had died since yesterday, while three hundred more were infected. Thousands more had been infected worldwide. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had confirmed that the virus was approaching a global pandemic.

  Elias shook his head. He hadn’t taken that damned virus into account. Perhaps that would obliterate the human species despite his efforts to save it. As the images of death and destruction replayed across the screen, Elias wondered what Earth was doing about the cadets. Were the nations of the world coming together behind the scenes as he’d predicted? Were they even now hatching a plan to take down the cadets? And what were they doing about the virus?

  It was so frustrating being out of the loop.

  As the TV shut off, the center of Elias’ back itched again, despite the poking and prodding of the mattress. He moved to the floor and sat with his back against the rounded corner of the bed so he could scratch the spot and get some temporary relief. He raised and lowered himself against the bed, but the scratching soon became painful.

  “Goddamnit!” Shaking with fury, he jumped to his feet and shouted, “I had the courage to act. The world was falling apart. This was the only solution. I’ll never apologize for that.”

  Another echo.

  “Maybe they’re all dead,” Cunningham said. “Maybe they all died from the virus and you’ll rot in this cell.”

  “Go away,” Elias said. He moved to the sink and splashed water on his face, then took a drink of nutri-water from the dangling tube before resuming his pacing.

  He walked from sink to wall, wall to sink, his mind drifting from problem to problem. There was so much he could be doing. They were wasting his talents in this cell. A high-pitched whine sounded just outside the door.

  This was different.

  Elias tensed, turned toward the door, straining to listen. Yes, definitely a whine—
the kind that emanated from the power packs of the Elite Ops. So a trooper was outside. Was he coming to kill Elias? The Elite Ops knew of his contempt for them, which made his transformation from the infusion of nanobots all the more ironic.

  The lock buzzed and Elias backed into the corner as far away from the door as he could get, his hands up in a defensive posture. The Elite Ops trooper outside would have to travel an extra eight feet to break his neck.

  But when the door opened, President Hope entered the room, followed by General Horowitz. Elias felt both relief and fear. He glanced at the Elite Ops trooper, who stayed outside.

  “Hello, Elias,” President Hope said.

  “Madam President.” He tried to keep the anger and hostility out of his voice.

  “I know you’re upset,” the President said. “I don’t care. I told you I didn’t want this program proceeding while I was in office. And you went ahead with it anyway.”

  “I didn’t intend to defy your orders, Madam President. The cadets just—”

  The President raised her hand. “It doesn’t matter how it happened. What matters is that this disaster occurred on my watch. I’m the one who will be judged a failure by future generations . . . if there are any future generations. Some of my people are saying this could be the end of humanity.”

  “We needed a disaster like this, Madam President. To save us.”

  “So you still think it’s a good thing,” President Hope pointed to the now-dark screen, “after everything you’ve seen?”

  “Not good,” Elias corrected. “Necessary. It was the slow build-up that was killing us, the creeping toward the tipping point, where every nation would reach critical mass around the same time, putting a massive strain on our planet’s limited resources and ability to heal itself. This kind of premature action will allow us to focus on the dangers that await should we continue our militaristic ethnocentrism.”

  “Fancy words,” President Hope said.

  “That’s your insecurity speaking.”

  General Horowitz took a step toward him, his face reddening, but President Hope grabbed his arm.

  She said, “You like to imagine you’re the smartest person in every room, but you’re not always right. You know that the United States will never surrender her military superiority. And China will never accept a subordinate role in the world. Russia still hungers for the old days when it could make a claim that it had the greatest might. And Brazil craves recognition as one of the top nations. At least half a dozen others pursue some sort of global power. Did you really think your actions would change that?”

  “It’s still possible.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? You’re so convinced you’re right that you can’t even acknowledge your mistakes.”

  “What was going to change without some external force? How were things getting better before this happened? We were headed for a long and painful extinction.”

  “We still may be.”

  “Ah, but now we’re forced to take action. The clock is ticking and if we don’t act swiftly and correctly, humanity will die.”

  General Horowitz said, “We’ve talked to every leading nation a handful of times in the past few days. None have even remotely suggested that disarmament is a possibility. They’re all afraid this is just a ploy by the United States to increase our dominance as the planet’s greatest superpower. They think you engineered this scenario to control the Moon and force them to back down. Now they’re building up their arsenals even more rapidly than in the past.”

  “And we,” President Hope said, “have no choice but to continue our development of weapons to defend ourselves. Your plan failed.”

  “Fools,” Elias said.

  Horowitz said, “Are you calling the President a fool?”

  Elias shook his head. This was all falling apart. Badly. If only Curtik had led the cadets, attacked mercilessly, given the world barely enough time to react and no more, the result might have been different. Damn that Zora!

  Elias felt exhausted. He sat on his bed. He’d forgotten how much fatigue could impact the mind, how difficult it became to think when he was exhausted. For the moment he couldn’t keep a single thought in his head. Jumbles of images and ideas flitted past, darting in and out of consciousness, eluding capture.

  “Elias,” President Hope said.

  He looked up. “Sorry,” he said. He made himself stand again. They were here to punish him. And he deserved their reprobation. Everything he’d worked for about to be ruined because one little girl reached a potential far beyond what he’d predicted for her and one little boy didn’t achieve to the level Elias had expected. He straightened his back, stood to attention, looked into his President’s face and said, “I am, of course, very sorry, Madam President, for letting you and this great nation down. Whatever course of action you choose to take, I will . . .”

  His voice trailed off as General Horowitz, his finger to the earpiece he wore in his left ear, bent close to the President and whispered something behind a cupped hand. President Hope raised her hand to stop Elias’ speech.

  “Put it on,” President Hope said. “You should see this,” she explained to Elias.

  The TV came to life again. On the screen was an image of the main hangar of Lunar Base 1, filled with people standing together, looking toward the cameras. In the center of the screen stood Devereaux and Zora. Flanking them were Lendra, Colonel Truman, Quark, Dr. Poole and two hospital beds, one holding a little girl and the other carrying Curtik. Behind them were cadets, tourists and workers—and standing in the back, a number of Escala, dwarfing their companions. Dr. Hackett’s team stood off to one side, though Elias didn’t see Dr. Hackett among them. But Jeremiah stood near the edge of the crowd and at the limit of the camera pickup. His face looked pinched with pain. Elias searched Lendra’s face for any message she might be trying to send. But before he could read anything the cameras focused in on Devereaux.

  The great man said: “Friends, the Moon was supposed to be neutral, owned by every nation and none. But one man, over the past few years, built forty weapons here to attack you, to create mass panic and horrific loss of life. These forty weapons are children—” Devereaux gestured toward Zora and another cadet behind her whom Elias didn’t recognize— “kidnapped from their families, genetically enhanced, infused with nanotechnology, whose growth was accelerated, and whose minds were conditioned to hate and destroy you. Their bodies achieved near perfection even as their minds were poisoned. But they are just children. The man who did this—an American named Elias Leach—made these children into fighting machines in an attempt to unite the oft-warring countries of the world, heedless of the human costs. His program lifted them up to great heights, then tried to crash them by causing unspeakable pain, by attacking their DNA, mutating their bodies and minds so they would feel compelled to obliterate you without knowing why. They are the weapons fired upon you by him, by Elias Leach.”

  Elias turned to the President. “This went out everywhere?”

  Tight lipped, she nodded.

  Devereaux continued: “And so they attacked you just as he planned. With his help, they took control of the orbiting Las-cannons and fired upon your cities and your military bases out of unreasoning rage. They killed millions, all because they did not see that they were mere puppets, dancing to his tune, acting out his play, until it was too late.

  “We know now the full extent of the damage caused, the pain and suffering, the anger and despair. We managed to cut the strings that held them. They no longer dangle from his insidious fingers. So we come here today to apologize for the harm he programmed them to inflict upon you, the harm we wish we could take back. We understand, however, that apologies are not sufficient. As much as we desire your forgiveness, we understand the barrier to such a plea. You wish justice, retribution, revenge, and who can blame you?”

  Elias glanced at President
Hope and General Horowitz. They ignored him, focusing on the screen. Only the Elite Ops trooper at the door paid any attention to him. And the trooper’s Las-rifle was aimed at his belly.

  “Your leaders,” Devereaux continued, “are even now conspiring to exterminate us, at the cost of destroying the Moon itself. Several nations have nearly completed work on illegal Las-cannons, which they will be able to fire at us within a few days if not a few hours. We come before you now to tell you, you need not wait. Control of the last remaining Las-cannon is at this moment being rerouted back to the United Nations. We put ourselves at your mercy. What we did to you . . .” Devereaux paused.

  “Clever bastard,” Elias mumbled, “inserting himself into the position of an attacker.”

  “. . . gives us no moral authority to beg for our lives. Perhaps we deserve to die for the sake of the greater good, even though it was Elias Leach who pulled our strings.

  “But we nonetheless ask you to contact your governments and plead with them on our behalf, for we believe we can help you greatly if spared your vengeance. You see, we have found what we believe is a cure for the Susquehanna Virus. It’s not perfected yet, but it seems to be a cure. And it will likely be destroyed if your leaders choose to attack us.”

  Again Devereaux paused to let everyone know just how big a mistake an attack on the Moon would be.

  “If we are spared,” he continued, “we will give you the serum. Even if you choose to destroy us, we will attempt to preserve the serum as a means of protecting the future of humanity. But the task may be insurmountable given the might of the forces directed against us. Our cameras will continue broadcasting from this point forward, allowing you to see us in what may be our final moments.

  “Remember, we’re just like you—people struggling to survive in a harsh world. And now that we’re no longer under Elias Leach’s control, now that we’re no longer compelled to lash out by the rage that was implanted in us from the outside, we wish no harm to anyone. We await your decision. If you choose to exterminate us, we cannot stop you. But mercy is the greatest human quality. Mercy elevates us. Thank you, and goodbye.”