The Ascension Myth Box Set

by Ell Leigh Clark

  She sped away from the parking lot, ordering her nav system to find the fastest way back to the office.

  Newstainment Offices, downtown Spire

  Maya sat at her desk with Bob the Boss hovering over her. It was the middle of the day, and the newsroom was a hive of activity. She would probably have Bob’s attention for 120 seconds until someone else pulled it away for something urgent.

  “Okay, so here is what I have,” she started, getting straight to it. “These two scientists have gone missing.”

  She pulled up the images of David Rek and Ana Grossman on her holo. Bob peered over his glasses to look at them. “Uh huh,” he said.

  Maya continued. “Except no one has reported them missing…”

  Bob glanced down at her briefly. “So how do you know they’re missing, then?”

  Maya didn’t miss a beat. “Because they were on the work schedule at the lab where they both work: Ventus Research.” She looked up over her shoulder to check her boss was following her explanation.

  “Everyone had been drafted in,” she continued. “Everyone is swiping in. In fact, attendance at the lab has increased by 80% in the last 10 days. People are staying all hours of the day and night and working to exhaustion. Except these two. They’re not on leave, and they’re not there. They’re just not swiping in.”

  Bob straightened up a little, and drew in breath. “And you got all this, how?” he asked. He was no longer looking at her screen, but now glancing down at her, sitting at her desk.

  She turned awkwardly to look up at him, feeling like a little girl. “HR records,” she said flatly.

  He looked back at the screen. “Clever girl.”

  He went straight on, almost as if he were embarrassed to dwell on the praise. “So what’s the crisis they’re managing?” The excitement of a hunt for the story was evident again in his voice.

  “Well,” she told him, “two weeks ago, they issued a release reporting that there had been a breech in protocol, and a toxin had been released into the population. It wasn’t germ warfare, or a virus that can spread, so it doesn’t have that sensationalism. The media, including us, have practically ignored it.”

  She pulled up a different screen to show him one of their own reports, with low placement and a couple of hundred hits.

  “But,” she went on, “in this same time period… there have been outbreaks of violence. Isolated cases.”

  Bob looked at her, twiddling his glasses in his hands. “You think there is a connection?”

  Maya nodded, speaking more quickly now. “Yes, and the incidents are escalating in the amount of violence, and the number of people affected. I think someone is testing the potency of the toxin that was taken, and monitoring the effects for something bigger. That’s why they need this other scientist alive. I think he’s helping them.”

  Bob stood upright again, one hand on his hip this time.

  He considered the information for a moment and then laid out the action plan. “Okay, get Johnny to carefully look into the background of this second scientist.”

  Maya started making notes.

  “Get him to check on his family,” Bob continued. “If he’s being leveraged, they could be in danger. Anything we find, get it to the police. There’s no room for fokking around on this. The city could be in danger.”

  Maya nodded diligently, knowing she needed to call the homicide detective anyway.

  Bob started to leave her cubicle, aware that other people were already queuing up to speak with him. He stopped and turned back to her.

  “How did you find the girl in the morgue?” he asked.

  Maya looked sheepish. “Ran a search for height and time of disappearance for both scientists who had disappeared. Only pulled up two possible matches, so I went down to ID them in person from their pictures.”

  He frowned a little as he asked the obvious. “You couldn’t have used facial rec?”

  She shook her head. “Something odd going on there. Why didn’t the authorities do that with the body? I figured that any trace of her on their records must have been wiped. I got Ana Grossman’s image off her social media profile. It would have been too suspicious for that to be removed, right? Got lucky, I guess.”

  Maya was already pulling up the number for Detective Antonio Rogers.

  Bob was shaking his head as he headed back to his office. “Good work, Maya,” he called back to her loudly, so that the whole department could hear him. “That kind of shit just can’t be taught.”

  People who were standing around turned and looked at him, and then in the direction of her cubicle.

  Maya smiled. She felt the stir it created, a dozen eyeballs drilling through her cubicle partitions to see why she was so special.

  She shook the attention from her mind, and focused down on her work again. She wasn’t home free yet.

  Chapter 12

  Gaitune-67, Safe house, Molly’s lab

  Paige clip-clopped back into the lab.

  Molly didn’t even look up, but acknowledged her entrance. “What’ve you been up to?” she asked.

  It had been a good few hours, and Molly had actually noticed her absence.

  Paige slumped back down onto a lab stool. “I was talking with the guys in the workshop,” replied Paige, somewhat cagily.

  Molly smiled to herself. “Brock, you mean?” she asked, eyes still in the microscope.

  Paige flushed a little.

  “What did he think of your nail varnish idea?” Molly asked. “I take it you guys have plans for selling this shit commercially…”

  Paige’s mouth hung open. “How could you possibly know that?”

  Molly removed the slide and replaced it with the next one. “I didn’t, for sure. You just told me…”

  Paige stared at her, waiting for more of an explanation.

  Molly sighed, and started to explain. “Well, if he were interested for his own purposes, you would have told him and then come back to pester me about it some more.”

  She flipped off another slide and swapped it out for the next one.

  “But since you were gone for so long, I figured you must be talking about something.” Molly looked up. “I didn’t know for sure until I asked you, though.”

  Paige, chuckling to herself, amazed at Molly’s abilities, rested her arms on the lab bench and then put her head on her arms.

  Molly started tidying the set of samples away. “So, what are you? Equal partners?”

  Paige shook her head. “No. He’s going to help with the modeling and brand image, but we won’t be able to nail that stuff down until we know everything the whole venture will entail. After we’re done with the mission, we’ll think about it some more.”

  Molly dumped the bunch of samples she’d been working through into a bag for incineration.

  Paige raised her head. “So how’s it coming along?” she asked, nodding towards the clutter of equipment and samples on the bench that Molly was now clearing away.

  “I’ve replicated the toxin, and I know with 89.9% certainty which one they’re using.”

  Paige’s normally smooth face looked wrinkled with concern. “Is that certain enough?”

  Molly nodded. “It’s going to have to be. The next possibilities are 11.3% and 4.8%.”

  Paige, despite her lack of scientific background, wasn’t convinced. “Is there any way to test it? To check it?”

  “Yeah, if we had a sample to check it against we could be 100% certain. But unless we get a sample from someone who is infected…” her voice trailed off.

  Paige looked more serious now. “Joel is still on the surface.”

  Molly’s voice was firm. “And to ask him to track down someone who is infected would likely get him exposed and killed. Not an option.”

  Paige nodded, racking her brain for a way to keep Joel safe, and still get them the sample.

  Molly took a deep breath and exhaled conclusively. “Anyway, now that I
have the most likely sample, I’ve already got an antidote sequencing.”

  Excuse me? Who has it sequencing?

  “Okay, so Oz is doing some super high-level processing shit to sequence an antidote.” Molly nodded over at a bench top machine that seemed to be whirring around. To Paige, it looked like a huge microwave oven.

  “Great. So then what?” Paige asked. “Once you have an antidote here… how do we get enough of it to the surface?”

  Molly waved her hand dismissively. “Once we know what it is, our friend Eugene should be able to replicate it there. Then we just have to think about how to deploy it once he’s created it.”

  Paige looked at Molly blankly. Molly sat down poking at screens on her holo.

  Molly hadn’t noticed Paige looking at her, and continued with the trail of thought. “You know, I noticed that the toxin is water soluble.”

  She poked at a few more screens.

  “If memory serves, the antidote for this plant toxin is also going to be water soluble…”

  Paige shook her head, confused. “Which means?”

  “Which means,” Molly looked up at her, “it’s likely that if they want to mobilize the toxin citywide, they’ll be hitting the water supply. The good news is, if the antidote is water soluble, we can put the antidote in there, too.”

  Paige’s eyes were wide. “You think they might try and infect everyone?”

  Molly nodded grimly. “Certainly seems likely,” she said. “So that means we need to find the most likely access points that would cause the most effective distribution - whether that means for deploying our antidote… or to guard those points, and stop them deploying the toxin.”

  Oz, can you pull the plans for the waterways in Spire?

  Already done, as you were interfacing with words.

  As opposed to the more superior way of using 1s and 0s?

  Exactly.

  Molly cocked her head. Paige looked at her, amused, assuming she was talking with Oz. Head now in her hand, as she leaned onto the bench, she watched Molly’s reactions, waiting for the solution to magically appear in the conversation.

  Okay, so there are three locations that are most likely to be toxin drop points. All are at distribution and filtration centers. If they understand what they are doing, they will hit the water post-filtration, before it is redirected back into the supply for a given area.

  Right. Any cameras on those access points?

  No. Only the building cameras for the staff. Not the specific vulnerable locations.

  So our next best bet is to get Joel to give us some eyes on these points, then?

  She opened her holo.

  Can you get a voice message to him in the next download, and attach the location of these points?

  Affirmative.

  Molly started talking into her holo. “Joel. Update. We have the toxin combo isolated, and Oz is working on the antidote. Both are water soluble, which means they’re going to deploy the toxin through the water system. We think. Oz has isolated the most likely targets and is attaching their locations here. We haven’t got visual access on any of the locations, so, short of guarding the locations, can you get Pieter to fit some cameras there so you can monitor them? In the meantime, we’ll get the antidote composition to Eugene at the lab, and he can fabricate the amount you’ll need, should the toxin be released.”

  She paused for a second, as if thinking of something else.

  “Please be careful.” She paused, as if wanting to add something else, but then decided not to.

  She clicked off the recording, and swiped to upload it to the system so that Oz could do his thing.

  She looked into empty space for a moment.

  Paige sat still, not wanting to interrupt her.

  Finally, Molly spoke. “We need to talk with Brock.”

  Hotel Erwin, downtown Spire

  Joel’s holo beeped.

  He swiped to see the message. It was an incoming download from Gaitune-67. “We’ve got communication from Molly,” he told Pieter, as he watched the download bar intently.

  “Think she’s found the antidote?” Pieter asked, the concern showing across his young face.

  “Knowing her,” replied Joel, a modicum of tension releasing from his chest and shoulders as he considered how competent she was with all this.

  The bar disappeared as the download opened. He played the voice message, and put it on speaker so that Pieter could hear too. He wanted to show that there were no secrets in their team. Even from a leadership perspective.

  As the message played, Joel pulled up the maps and then shared the frame so they could both be looking at it spread across the table.

  “These are all at different points in the city,” he said, once the message had ended. “It’s going to take several hours to get around to them all.” He looked up at Pieter. “What do you think about the cameras? Do we need to acquire some more gear?”

  Pieter nodded. “Definitely. But I can route them all through this holo easily, and set up an alert every time any motion is sensed-”

  Pieter stopped mid-thought.

  Joel noticed. “Whatcha thinking?” he asked.

  Pieter started speaking slowly. “Well, if someone is going to deploy the toxin, we’ll see where they do it. But after they’ve already done it. By that time, the water is contaminated…”

  “And then we get our asses down there to deploy the antidote from the same place.” Joel finished his thought.

  “Right,” agreed Pieter quickly. “But that’s less than ideal. What we really want is to be able to stop it from happening.”

  Joel straightened up and scratched the back of his head. “Well, short of having someone to guard each point, that’s not going to be possible.”

  Pieter became more animated. “What if it were? I mean, you and I could take one point each.” Pieter had a determined look in his eye.

  Joel found himself somewhat surprised to see it, but then he had to be responsible. “How much combat training have you had?”

  Pieter shrugged. “None. But you can teach me to shoot a gun.”

  Joel eyed him carefully. “And if a whole squad shows up?”

  Pieter looked unaffected. “Leave me with lots of bullets.”

  Pieter’s fearlessness, bordering on the cavalier, reminded Joel of himself when he first signed up to the space marines. Of course, Joel probably had another couple pounds of muscle on him, and, yes, less geekiness, too.

  Joel made the only decision he could as a leader.

  “I don’t think so,” he told Pieter firmly. “But maybe Ventus has a security detail we can use.”

  He pointed again at the map. “Let’s find a place to purchase those cameras fast, and then at least get them deployed. I’ll make a call to Molly’s contact at the research facility, and get things moving there.”

  Joel sent the maps over to Pieter to figure out the road trip they were going to have to make. Then he pulled up a holo connection.

  “Hi. Is this Eugene? … Great… This is Joel Dunham. I work with Molly Bates. Yes. Yes. I’m here on-planet…”

  Chapter 13

  Newstainment Offices, downtown Spire

  “Maya Johnstone?”

  The Ogg approaching her was obviously a cop. His brown atmojacket was civilian, but there was an air about him that screamed law and order.

  Maya turned from her desk in her cubicle, a look of recognition in her eyes. “Greeting of the day. Yes. Detective Rogers?” She stood up, and stepped to meet him.

  Antonio Rogers held out his hand and they shook hands. Maya thought he was a sturdy character from the firmness of his handshake.

  “I have a meeting room booked,” she told him. “Would you like to come in?”

  He looked surprised to be treated so efficiently. “Sure,” he smiled.

  Maya led the way out of the open-plan office and past the elevators, through to the series of glass-fronted meetin
g rooms. Ducking in the second door, she welcomed him in and held the door for him.

  “Mocha?” she offered.

  The detective waved a hand politely and then put it on his middle. “No, no thank you. I’m a bit mocha-ed out today,” he told her.

  She smiled. “Yeah, I know that feeling.”

  They sat, and the detective pulled up his holo. “So you got my name from…?”

  “Doctor Jones, at the district mortuary,” she answered.

  He didn’t speak, but gave her space to tell the story. Two sentences in, she was pulling up screens and details, as well as the Ventus employees’ profile pictures, explaining to him everything she knew.

  He carefully took notes. “So you think that the guy, David-” he looked down at his notes, but she jumped in.

  “David Rek.”

  “Rek…” he repeated. “You think he is being held by them, and developing the toxin to be deployed en masse?”

  “Yes.” Confidence radiated from her, despite the telltale signs of exhaustion under her eyes.

  Rogers shifted in his chair and put his arm on the table next to him. He looked at her, trying to read how she had gotten so far in an investigation where he had come up with nothing.

  She suddenly remembered something. “I have something else to tell you…” she added.

  Rogers signaled for her to continue.

  She pulled up a file on her holo that Johnny had bumped her just before Rogers had arrived.

  “It’s the family. Everything seems to be happening as it should: kid going to school, wife going to work.” She opened up pictures of David Rek’s family, head shots and surveillance footage.

  She continued. “But Johnny, one of our investigators, says that they seem… anxious. The mother picks the child up from school and hurries home. Other mothers have tried to stop her to talk, but it was like she was in a rush and distracted. Their reactions made it look like it was unexpected. Unusual.”

  Rogers looked from the pictures back at Maya. “How do you think this means something?” Rogers was playing devil’s advocate.

  Maya picked up on that. It was how Bob had trained her to think critically.