“Oh, hell no. I didn’t sign on for this.”
“Indeed you did not.” Ozma spoke up for the first time since the briefing had started. “Nor did I, and we can save the infected. But only if we all act with the swiftest speed.”
Chapter Twelve
NATIONAL SECURITY ACTION MEMORANDUM 378
To: The Vice President, The Secretary of State, The Secretary of Defense, The Secretary of Superhuman Affairs, The Secretary of Homeland Security, The Director of the National Intelligence, The Director of Central Intelligence, The Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, The US Attorney General, The US Department of Health and Human Services, Speaker of the House, Senate Majority Leader.
Subject: Operation Bio Shield
With the expansion of the National State of Emergency, I am authorizing the Chicago Sentinels and associated personnel to detain and sequester 1) all persons testing positive for Rabies Lyssavirus, and 2) all persons suspected of infection by Rabies Lyssavirus until they can be tested. The US Army has been charged with secure containment, and all departments are directed to extend full cooperation and resources for the duration of the emergency. A public White House statement, to be broadcast by the major networks, will explain the measure this evening.
From: Jennifer Touches Cloud, President of the United States.
DSA Field Report: Agent Smith
Okay boss, you said to open it, and I’ve opened it. Whoever Asset Power Chick is, she acquired the services of a Polish terrakinetic I’ve never heard of, Kret (means mole, the digging kind not the espionage kind), and flew her from Poland via ballistic delivery. Not cheap and she arrived masked and costumed with a remote handler to do all the talking, so I couldn’t tell you anything other than she obviously works out. She also bored through the hardened cast stone we used to seal the site like it was loose clay, opened up a chamber capable of hosting a poker game in under two hours. So much for site security—we just have to hope it’s more secure from the other side.
Personally, I think this is crazy, boss. But the way is open, access is restricted to a narrow tunnel, and the Platoons you sent are busy rigging the crap out of it with enough bang to take out a demon baron or prince if one tried to crawl out of Hell (and I can’t believe I’m worrying about that), and a micro-nuke to slag the whole site if that’s not enough.
Let’s hope that’s enough.
Operation Gateway, File 1-005.
Hope still couldn’t believe it, but one call from Veritas to Director Kayle, shadowy head of the Department of Superhuman Affairs, and a call from him to the White House, and she, Blackstone, Ozma, and Veritas were huddled in Blackstone’s office on a video conference with the President of The United States. POTUS looked as wiped as they did, her copper skin pale with fatigue.
“If this were a movie,” Veritas said, “the solution would be finding the evil son-of-a-bitch responsible for this and seizing the stockpile of Verne-engineered cure they’d prepared to ‘sell’ for a measly hundred billion dollars. I don’t even know what to call this.”
“But will it work?”
“Ma’am, there are . . . predictions—”
“Spare me the circumlocutions, agent,” Touches Clouds stopped him. “Everyone on this end is read in on the Ouroboros and the Big Book of Contingent Prophecy.”
“Very well. Madame President, I don’t know if it will. The Future Files don’t contain this precise attack and response. Similar actions have been recorded as effective, and I don’t see that we have much choice.”
He played with his shades. “We’re faced with the necessity of rounding up close to three thousand American citizens, interning them until they die, and sending their loved ones their ashes since the bodies will present an attractive target for groups wanting to get their hands on a new bioweapon. And we can’t tell the public there’s no more vaccine and no cure. If we do, then a non-trivial number of infected, some of them civilian and criminal breakthroughs, will at the very least not report for internment. There will probably be immediate rioting. Telling the public that we’re sequestering their infected loved ones until they can be cured will hold off the blowback long enough to deal with the immediate threats. Lying now will save lives, but the lie won’t hold up for long and when we have three thousand rabies deaths to explain . . .”
“I asked if you think it will work, and you’re talking about public spin. Why?”
“The CDC has never initiated a large-scale Medusa Protocol before, ma’am, but whether it works here or not it buys us time. Without the protocol we’re looking at just days before things get very nasty and bloody. With it, months or never. Whether or not it saves anybody in the end is secondary.”
“Blackstone?”
“I’m sorry, Jenny. It’s the only option I see that doesn’t lead to immediate disaster.”
“Astra? Can you sell it?” Hope knew exactly what she was asking; was she prepared to throw her reputation as Astra, Girl Hero, into the fire?
“I have to, ma’am. It’s the only chance they’ve got, and I’m confident Ozma can do it.”
“Your majesty? What price does the Defender of the Emerald City and Empress of Oz require for this favor?”
Ozma smiled politely, obviously quite comfortable dealing with a head of state. She was one, after all, and Hope wondered how many treaties she’d signed sitting on the Emerald Throne. “Only material assistance, when the time comes. I should warn you, it may come sooner because of this. We can work the details out when there is time for proper reflection, but I will commit you to nothing you can’t in conscience and practice agree to or deliver.”
“Done. The first step’s already been taken. Director Kayle’s assigning all moveable DSA Platoon assets directly to your service for the duration of the action.” Her hard face softened minutely, lips curving. “I’m fascinated to see what a full company or battalion of Bobs will do. Kayle has never let me know how many of Platoon there really are.” She inhaled deeply, drawing herself up. “Go. Make it work. Save everyone. It’ll be a refreshing change for all of us and a fitting legacy for Rush. I’ll deal with the fallout.”
The screen reverted to the White House logo and Hope let out a shaky breath. “Shell, how long do we have?”
Her BF displaced the blue and white logo. “According to Dr. Clemens, twelve hours, give or take a few, before infected victims start presenting symptoms.”
“It will be enough,” Blackstone said. “We’ll make it be enough. Quin’s lined up the announcement for two hours from now, you’ve got until then to work your cyber-voodoo. Coordinate with Platoon for his end, bother me for approval only if you need something not already in the plan. Get everyone their targets as soon as you can.”
“Rodger dodger, codger!” Shell saluted and disappeared while Hope choked down her laugh.
Blackstone chuckled at Shell’s sign-off, eyes briefly lighter. “Go,” he said to them. “I’d call this my greatest illusion, but this one will be all yours. Let us all pray for a successful lie—and pray we’re ready for what comes after.”
“Calm down, everyone! Please!” With the metal chairs stacked against the wall, the Paladins’ Chicago chapter meeting room still held standing room only. Debra hadn’t seen the room this full since the Green Man attacks and now it was filled with too many bodies, too much stink of fear and anger. At least she could use the anger. “We need to get statements from all of you who were in the front this morning if we’re going to salvage this!”
The volume dropped to bearable levels, but she almost wished it louder when Bradley Meagers stepped up. “I was at the front! We were ready for them!”
She bit back her first response. The Paladins needed guys like Meagers—eager to do what needed to be done when the time came—but he was a sledgehammer to her scalpel. At least he’d followed her instructions that they go in unarmed, had made sure his boys did the same. Now if only they’d actually been attacked. Or even just led the crowd over the barriers and gotten badly roughed up.
> Dammit, they needed an incident, something to show the sheep what the government had planned for them. Today had been perfect, and Meagers’ swaggering confidence after his screwup pushed her past her last inch. “Then where are your bruises? I don’t see anyone limping, didn’t see any arrests on the afternoon news covering what went down.”
“The explosions—”
“Before the explosions! You guys backed off and it’s all over the internet!” Most of the crowd at the CDC base hadn’t been theirs, Debra had worked hard to whip them up with her messaging and at least half a dozen had had cellphones out and recording. “You stopped for Astra! Shit! A Girl Scout shouldn’t be afraid of her! And then you—” She ground her teeth. And then that Artemis bitch had shown up and pushed the whole crowd back like she’d sucked the spines out of every last one of them!
Her pause to collect herself gave Meagers a chance to spout off. “That insane cape threatened to shoot everybody! We didn’t come armed for that!”
“She’d have shot you with mercy rounds, you moron! Probably wouldn’t have penetrated the vest you’re wearing under your jacket! You know their rules of civilian engagement! And we’d have gotten her on video shooting innocent people!” And if they’d been very lucky, the vampire bitch opening up on the crowd would have tipped the few cops on the scene into shooting as well. They didn’t use non-lethal rounds and there’d have been bodies to show the world. Unfortunate, of course, but tinder for the American Revolution had been laid by the Boston Massacre after all. “We needed—” The bang of metal shearing ended her rant before it began.
The entryway security door popped open with a second bang as the bolt lock snapped and Astra stepped into the room.
Her hands were empty, but a miraculous space cleared in the packed room as she walked up to the front, stepping up to the slightly raised speaker’s platform in the dead silence. Stepping into Debra’s space, the girl nodded once and turned to face the room.
“I need everyone’s attention, please,” she said.
Nobody spoke and looking down at the crown of the blond head turned away from her, Debra ground her teeth on outrage. “You have no—” Astra’s hand came up and she flinched away before seeing the piece of paper in it.
“Federal warrant under the state of emergency—CAI capes are deputized under CDC authority.” Astra didn’t turn her head but let go when Debra automatically reached for the warrant, fumbling it and having to retrieve it from the floor. She didn’t wait for her to read it. “Rush died this afternoon,” she informed them all, voice level. “You all might be happy about that, but the only reason we know about the virus at all is that during and after the attack Rush spent days in hours, hours in minutes, and minutes in seconds rushing ahead of the rest of us to save as many people as he could. Because of that he gave us days, time to understand we were still under attack. That’s why I’m here.”
She raised her voice slightly. “Within the hour, the mayor and the CDC is going to announce an emergency action. All citizens known or suspected to have been exposed to the virus are to be collected to a single location. There they will be treated by the CDC. There will be no rationing of treatment, and the protocol to be used will be universally effective. But the protocol can only be applied once, at a single time and place, for everyone. Which means all stragglers, all holdouts, will be signing their own death-warrants. It’s a very unpleasant way to die, and it will be very dangerous for all around you.
“And that’s why I’m here now, and why this building is surrounded by DSA agents. Nobody else is going to die of this. Rush is victim zero of this attack. He will be its only victim. Eleven of you are confirmed to have been or likely were in one of the attack zones and exposed, and it’s the opinion of the agency that watches you that some or all of you will resist being taken in and treated.” She clasped her hands behind her back.
“I understand, believe me I do, but on my signal, the agents will peacefully enter to collect you. And you will go with them quietly, or I will break your arms and you will then go with them quietly. The treatment will save you whatever your physical condition when you get it. If you’re armed, you should now turn your pieces over to a friend, neither I nor the agents will see them. The point is to bring everyone here to where we can save them.” She drew a breath. “The senior agent will read off the names and you will raise your hands. If any of you who are not named suspect that you might have been infected, please also raise your hands and we will take you with us.”
Low protests and profanities swept the room, but nobody dared to even raise their voice to the soft-spoken girl standing in front of them and Debra’s stomach curdled as, squaring her shoulders, Astra still didn’t look at her. “Please understand me. Atlas told me once that power, any kind of power, is a threat to people who don’t have it. He understood, and I’ve always remembered the lesson. He also held us all to a higher standard than we hold our celebrities and politicians. He said if the authorities didn’t trust us, if the people didn’t trust us, well, then we’d be in a fight for our lives and we might be the winners and we might be the losers but we wouldn’t be the Good Guys anymore. I know you don’t like me, you don’t trust me, and I don’t get to be the Good Guy in this room, but you have my word that nobody here is going to die today. The agents are entering the building.”
More bangs as doors at the sides and back of the office breached, the room flooding with helmeted goons in black riot gear, and still Debra couldn’t find the words to articulate her rage. She didn’t have to; the blue eyes that finally turned to her, one still purpled and swollen, saw it. Saw and acknowledged it with nothing more than a bare smile that made it even worse.
The girl sighed. “Fight another day, Debra. Right now let’s save everybody. Please?”
“ . . . I’ll make some calls. Not everyone you’re looking for is here.”
“Then we probably know where they are but that would help, thanks.”
The cold barrel touched the back of Crusher’s neck and he froze. Not that he expected it to help—he couldn’t see whoever stood behind him, couldn’t use his compressive telekinesis to crush them before they separated his head from his neck with a bullet. He was in a corner, dammit, even in the bass-booming darkness of the club how the hell could anyone have gotten behind him?
“Smart,” a raspy alto voice whispered in his ear.
“And you’re stupid unless you got paid for the risk. So who wants me to know I’m dead before I’m a corpse?”
His louder words clued the idiots lounging beside him. On his right Barry jerked upright, turning to look and going white. On his left Sheila went for her piece and dropped when the snap of his killer’s second weapon threw her from the booth seat to crumble beneath the table. The booming club music drowned the noise—nobody looked towards their corner.
“Nobody,” the voice said as if nothing had happened. It was the kind of voice he’d love to hear under any other circumstance; female, deep, edged like a knife. “But you’re a dead man walking anyway. We think you’re infected.” The word fell on his ear like a death-sentence. “The virus. You were in the South Side fight with the zombies, saved a lot of lives. Good job. But you were in one of the contaminated zones and in two maybe three days we expect you to go berserk, crush a bunch of people with your power, and then die ugly. Some of those kills you might actually regret.”
Crusher made himself relax. “So you’re here to finish me first? Sounds like it’ll be less painful.”
“It would be, and easy or ugly you’d deserve it, but no.” A small movement behind him and a black patch landed on the table. It looked like a thick nicotine-patch.
“That’s a Sandman Patch.” The barrel pressed harder. “In a minute you’re going to put it on your arm and go to sleep. Then nice people are going to come in and collect you to take you in for treatment that will save your worthless ass. If you don’t then I’ll serve the warrant I have that says I can bring you in breathing or a corpse. But first, you�
��re going to slowly get out your cell and call your buddies upstairs. You’re going to tell them I’m here with lots of friends and the same warrant for all of them. They’re going to come downstairs one at a time or I’m going to go upstairs for them and they’ll die fast instead of ugly.”
“And who will I tell them is here?”
“Artemis.” The whisper, almost a hiss, turned Crusher’s blood to ice. Sheila had been stupid. The death behind him laughed softly, enjoying his fear. “Pity you’re being so smart, but keep it up and all of your peeps will be fine. It’s all the same to me, but a friend doesn’t want anyone else to die today.”
“Traffic cam confirms it’s them,” Shell whispered in his ear.
“Got it. Thanks, kiddo.” Seven stepped off the curb and into the path of the speeding sedan, drawing his gun as the vehicle’s front tire blew out to swerve it away from him and into the light pole with a crunch and crash of shattering glass. The pole sheared at the base to fall onto the car—not that the occupants noticed with the bursting impact of the airbags.
The five-man team of the CPD’s finest rushed the far side of the car but Seven took his time, stepping up to smash the miraculously intact glass of the rear passenger’s side window with his gun butt. He pushed the deflating airbag away and tossed the warrant into the stunned woman’s lap. She’d have been pretty if not for the impressively bloody nose that covered her face and front in red. He gave her his patented smile. “Evening, Crisper. No funny moves, that’s a warrant. You’re coming in so we can treat you and you don’t die. Your buddies, too.” A quick look told him the other two were moving. “This is your lucky day, everyone.”
Repercussions (Wearing the Cape Book 8) Page 12