Steve lost his balance again for a moment and felt as if he had been pushed down a long set of stairs through which he walked, then started to roll down. When he came to his senses, he could see through hallways and floors, apartments, ceilings, floors, everywhere at the same time, but he had a hard time concentrating on what he needed to see.
-Look closer.
As Steve pushed himself to concentrate on what the Mastermind insisted, he saw it clear as day--police officers going through some of the hallways of the building, together with people he did not recognize.
“I need to see who they are. I need to listen,” Steve said, his voice echoing faintly into this world of everything that he was submerged in. Without much effort, sound came to be around him, but at a level that completely disoriented him and made him look all around him. “God damn it,” he realized. “I need to listen to these people.”
-You will listen when you put yourself to it. One does not simply ask the collective but cooperates with it to become part of everything around you.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Steve asked as he felt a cold stab in the back of his throat.
-Be silent and listen.
For a moment Steve listened and concentrated on connecting what he was seeing with the sound. Slowly he started making out what was happening there with the people moving through the hallways.
“...The count is going up as we move further down this hallway. This is stronger than the rest of the ones we have found so far,” said a male voice, followed by a female one.
“This may well be it. Can we confirm it with our equipment?” said the female voice. Then he saw them: people in yellow hazmat suits who moved around with large equipment, making noise as they pushed it through walls and the ceiling of the hallway.
“Shit, get me out,” Steve said. As he came back to himself, he hit the door of the bathroom with his left hand. “Damn, how do you control this thing?” he wanted to know.
-With understanding will come the power of the collective. For now we feel there is a threat you have perceived and we need to understand how to act.
“We need to fix this damn mess, starting with this bathroom,” Steve said as he put on his jacket and walked outside. Then he saw Liz lying there on the floor. “Oh, shit,” he exclaimed. “That’s not good!”
-She no longer serves any purpose to us and we see the disturbance it will cause. We will get rid of her for you, but this will take time.
“Time, how much?” Steve asked as he heard voices coming from outside. He grabbed things he saw that could be considered suspicious and put them all in the bedroom as he saw a large mass of black mold coming out of the bathtub and advancing toward Liz’s body.
To say that he was shocked at what he was witnessing would be an understatement. The fact that he could feel this thing crawling out of the bathtub and moving around the ground was a strange feeling. He could feel the sleek floor of the bathroom and then the crusty carpet, but what he still could not understand is what the mold intended to do with the woman’s body.
“Hello,” said a voice coming from the other side of the door and then a few knocks. For a moment he saw an image of the people on the other side of the door. There was the woman he had heard. A man next to him walked with some sort of electronic pad with a bunch of wires around it. Behind were two people dressed in hazmat suits and four police officers farther behind them who made sure no one went in or out of the hallway without them knowing. “Is someone in?” the voice asked.
“Coming,” Steve said as he checked back in the mirror. For a moment he examined himself and confirmed that there was no blood or anything left that could give him away. The other thing he checked was the mirror itself, which was now fully repaired. To his amazement he put his hand over it and felt it as being a single piece. “Really?” he thought to himself.
-We can understand your feelings. The collective can do much more than this, because we continue to grow in power with every passing moment.
“And I’m just in the right moment and the right place,” Steve said with a smirk. He proceeded to the door and opened it just as Jean was knocking again. “Can I help you?” he asked politely.
“I’m Jean Callahan with the CDC. We are performing an investigation on this floor and would like to take some samples from the water supply in this apartment if you may allow us,” said Jean. Steve was taken aback by this but did not make a single motion that could give him away.
“Sure. But I have a problem. You see, Liz asked me to take a look into an issue with some faucets and the bathroom, and I am looking into the whole thing. The apartment is a mess, you see, and she took the longest time to let me know about the whole situation, which is not a big problem,” Steve said in the most calm and serene way. Jean nodded at every word Steve said, but she insisted on pushing through to get some water samples. “Look,” Steve told her, “I am all in for whatever it is you need to do, but I need to get this fixed first before I let you in. This smell could kill a horse.”
As they were discussing the situation, Chad looked at his phone and could see that a considerable mold build-up was inside the apartment from what the sensors were picking up. It increased more than what they had previously picked up the moment they opened the door.
“Jean,” said Chad, as he showed the phone to Jean and the numbers that were now showing up. “This is probably what you are looking for.”
Jean nodded and proceeded to push the issue again with Steve.
“Excuse me, Mr….,” said Jean, who was stopped short by Steve.
“Steve Worth. You never asked for my name, you know?” Steve said and smiled. Jean took this the wrong way, though, as she saw in Steve some type of old pervert who was trying to hit on her.
“Mr. Worth, we need to take samples from the water in this apartment. It will be but a moment of your time.”
-Let her in.
“Sure thing. Do any of the rest of you also need to come in? Should I also get a mask?” Steve asked as he moved to the side and let Jean in. She was followed shortly by the people in hazmat suits who took measurements inside the apartment. Chad, on the other hand, stood in the doorway examining his phone. As the people advanced into the apartment, he noticed that the numbers slowly decreased.
“That’s strange,” said Chad, who moved next to Jean again. “So right now, we are seeing lower numbers. Maybe this is the floor, but not the right apartment?”
“What’s that you are looking at?” Steve asked, truly curious as to why they kept looking at a phone and what their intentions were. He already knew but was more interested in getting the truth from them directly than through an Almighty Being who could hear and see everything.
“Measurements of particles per cubic inch of air. The pollutants in this floor are considerable, and a large build-up was detected coming from this apartment,” said Jean, as she observed how the information in real-time kept telling them the numbers were going down.
“Look, that could be possible as my tenant was very sick with something. I didn’t even want to see her, so I told her to go to the hospital,” Steve said. Jean immediately turned back to him.
“What is your tenant’s name?” asked Jean. Steve thought about the situation for a moment. He could buy enough time to make it to the elevator if he lied to them, but on the other hand they looked organized enough that they could pull the information right away from wherever they needed to.
“Elizabeth Palmer. She’s been my tenant for about a year now,” Steve said as he looked at someone moving into the bathroom. “Do you mind if I keep doing what I need to do, because as I understand it, you only needed to take water samples and I keep seeing people moving those rods around.”
“Yes, I will be taking the water samples,” said Jean as she moved into the kitchen where she could sense a faint smell of sewage which made her slightly nauseous.
“People, I need to work and get things done. Time is money. Can I ask you to get whatever the hel
l you need and get out?” Steve said as he raised both hands, then moved towards the bathroom. Chad had his sight fixed on the man and in turn Steve completely ignored him and simply moved to the bathroom where he found a person in a hazmat suit taking a water sample. “Oh, you, too?” Steve said.
As they kept gathering samples, there was no clear indication of what had happened or why the numbers were not matching up again. The sampling performed by the CDC Quick Response Team would get information in some fifteen minutes, but they had to go outside in order to move the samples into the mobile lab.
“Mr. Worth,” said Jean as she moved back into the bathroom. The person in a hazmat suit had already moved away and into the hallway again, while Steve continued working on the bathroom, pretending to get the bathtub unclogged. “Do you know where your tenant is?” Jean asked him.
“Sure as hell don’t know,” Steve said as he finished dropping the bucket of chemicals into the bathtub and saw how a foul cloud came back up, then the sound of something being pushed into the pipes, the rotten smell from the sewage finally going away. “God damn. Finally,” Steve muttered.
“Would you happen to have her information at hand? We would like to ask her some questions,” said Jean. Steve looked back at her fixated eyes.
“Yes, I can give it to you, but please move away. I’ve been in this damn bathroom for the last hour and I really want to get out of here,” Steve said as he pushed Jean and Chad out of the apartment. “Siri,” Steve said.
As he received no answer, he noticed that he was missing his ear piece. When he pulled out his phone, he saw that it was completely smashed.
“Damnit, I forgot that I dropped the damn thing. Can’t get a decent phone made nowadays, huh?” Steve said as he put his phone back in his pocket. “Look, give me your card and I’ll send you the information as soon as I get back to my office tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow? But could you--” said Jean, who was immediately interrupted by Steve.
“Look, I’m very busy right now, and I really need to get to another one of my tenants and see if I still have enough time to get my phone replaced, all right?” Steve said and started walking away towards the elevator area.
“We have questions about what happened here. Officer, stop that man!” Jean ordered.
Steve became enraged, turned around and drew himself up. “Don’t you know who I am? I own thousands of units around this city and my time is very valuable. Right now, you’re costing me hundreds of dollars an hour. What’s the name of your boss? I will be in touch with him and we’ll see what he says about this so called situation.”
Jean immediately backed down. “Okay, leave your phone number with the officer. Chad, can we continue to search for the source for this?”
Steve smiled and gave his card to the officer and left. Chad began to search around nearby for the source of the mold.
“We have plenty so far. The samples that were collected today may help you more than what I have so far provided you with. I am only a sniffing dog leading you to where you need to be,” said Chad as he observed the hazmat crew coming back from the end of the hallway. “They are the ones that are doing all the heavy lifting.”
“Hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of this. I need to call Doctor Sandberg, though. The name of that tenant Mr. Worth mentioned--was it Elizabeth?” asked Jean. Chad nodded partially.
“I believe so, yes,” he said. Jean pulled out her phone, then looked through some of the information that she had gathered. After going through most of the medical records, she found what she needed: Elizabeth Palmer, Born May 5th, 1964. Cityplace 9943, Apartment 6540.
Jean turned her sight towards the door and saw the number printed there.
Chapter 18
Now Boarding
“We have arrived at your destination,” said Siri through the speakers of his SUV. Steve greedily observed the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport structure. Cityplace would be a joke compared to what he could achieve through this single spot, the third most-used airport in the world and the seventh in traffic. From this spot he could spread the mold with ease and achieve the power that he so much desired.
-The collective guides you to success. We are slowly moving and growing to become the sole owner of this world, with your guidance.
With those words Steve left his SUV and began to walk through the parking lot towards the main entry point of the airport. As he did so he made sure that he came in contact with as much of what surrounded him as he could, not just because he was slowly spreading bits of the mold everywhere, but also because his sensorial terminals were now perceiving the world in a different way. He could sense imperfections in everything around him that he would not have otherwise noted.
He would rebuild the world as he pleased, one that was not filled with such constraints and inefficiency.
For a moment he dropped slowly into the Well. He came to call it that--when he was thrown into the mind of the collective and was given access to the mind and body of others. From it he could see that he had already come in contact with a small number of travelers and personnel from the airport, but enough so that he could get a good visual sense of the inside.
-We spread, we grow, we live.
The voice of the Mastermind had become absolute now. Slowly it kept growing on him that this voice was becoming more and more like his own. He was intoxicated by this, that a being with Godlike powers came to be like him meant that he was right all along to drop all the formalities and useless things that tied humans to their pathetic way of life. What would morals and ethics teach him that he had not learned on his own by removing all those stupid restraints that humanity so much pushes into its education and life--pointless.
All of it was pointless when you could not achieve your own desires.
As he concentrated again within the Well, he saw that the collective was in control of some of the security personnel from the Airport. This pleased him. It also pleased the Mastermind to feel Steve’s reaction to this new development.
-More of those will come under our control. We need all of them under the collective.
“All and every one of them, personnel, pilots, traffic control, police officers and any soldiers that are traveling through this airport need to be part of us. They will help us when the time comes,” Steve said through his own mind. He had learned to manifest himself in the Well with the rest of the collective and to focus more into what mattered. As the collective grew, so did its understanding of the world that surrounded it and with the way Steve understood the world, it could easily process its actions and intentions if these things would benefit them.
They did not need to ask for permission from Steve, or from anyone else, for that matter. They acquired everything they needed from their hosts. The collective shared this information with the rest. At first it took them some time to figure out how to connect with the synaptic patch of the brain. This had consequences on some of the hosts which would kill them, but losing a finger was nothing to the collective as long as they would achieve full control of their hosts.
As they managed to get the information out, they started to correlate images, sounds, notations, ideas. Understanding patches of information through electrical impulses became their sole task. As it became more and more obvious how these worked, they managed to get their hosts to do as they wished.
Then they backed away.
The collective was curious and learned fast, but it was also aware that their hosts had recently gone through a world pandemic that changed the way they understood and acted in their world. This realization meant they had to stop on their original intentions for rapidly taking over their hosts in the most hostile way until they could figure out how to use them for their purposes. Doing so would have meant being found out. The CDC was a prime example of those things they wanted to avoid.
But Steve was confident that while these people would come and ask questions, that they were fully unaware of what was really going on. While it h
ad been true that the collective had raised suspicions through their actions just a few days ago, no one could exactly pinpoint the true sources of this and for all they cared it was something that came and went. It was not efficient to go and take chances on something that was just giving mild reactions to a body when there were far more important things going around.
That and budget also. Steve loved this and made it a key point of helping the collective understand that money was a key factor in many of the transactions and occurrences in the world. It was at first hard for the collective to grasp such a thing, but the general idea translated to them as an interaction that required an exchange. To them it was more like the interaction they had with their hosts in which they would take information from them while giving them back a sense that nothing wrong was going on.
This last bit they had also learned from Steve and the collective had a better time interacting with the host. After learning how the chemical production worked, they could simply pump the body with enough dopamine for them to become focused on what the collective needed from them.
“I need control,” Steve said as he focused on some police officers who were located just outside the main entry point to the airport. “They will serve our purpose. We need the tower and all the pilots.”
As the images of who these people were flooded the Well, the collective immediately started to do its job in moving towards these people while Steve tried to interact with the police officers from a distance. At first he felt a strange mix of dread and mortality, but that was quickly flushed away when the dopamine kicked in on them. For a moment they all relaxed and looked at each other as if they were all aware of what was going on.
The four officers raised their right hands and then their left while pointing at the officer to their left. It was as if the four had become a single person that Steve could easily control. As he approached them, he could see himself walking with a grin on his face.
He loved this far more than anything else that he had done in his life.
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