by A. T. Avon
But how long could it go on like this?
At some level, Missy knew she would need a plan.
‘Missy?’ The voice seemed to have come from on high, as if from God himself. Missy glanced up at the speakers in the ceiling, relieved. It was her father’s voice and it filled her with confidence, even as she feared the rats might react violently.
She didn’t dare answer. She exchanged a look with West, who eventually gave her a small nod.
‘We’re here,’ she said speaking as softly as she could.
‘I know,’ said her father. ‘We’ve been watching you, we can see you both. Tang told me what’s going on, he’s let me ah… sit in and help, help resolve this.’
‘Okay, good. I don’t suppose you have a plan for getting us out of here?’
‘We’ve been talking it through up here, and we think we should turn up the heat.’
‘Turn up the heat?’ Missy figured she had misheard. ‘How will that help?’
There was no reply.
She tried again. ‘We’re already sweating in here, how is turning up the heat going to help?’
‘Can you see that screen off to your left, Missy? There’s a computer monitor there.’
Missy looked. She hadn’t realized it was a monitor, but now that she looked carefully, she could see it was. ‘Yeah.’
‘I’m going to put up some footage which will be difficult for you to look at. But it’s important you see it, so you understand and believe everything I’m about to say. You watching?’
‘I’m watching.’
The screen flashed on, and Missy found herself peering from on high down into a busy airport. It was hard to know what to focus on. Like any airport, there were people coming, people going, most of them dragging suitcases of various shapes and colors.
‘Recognize anyone?’ her father asked.
She didn’t. For one thing, the people in the footage were too small, too grainy. The film looked to be some kind of security footage, CCTV or something like that.
‘Keep watching,’ said her father, ‘bottom left of the screen.’
She looked bottom left, and her attention immediately went to a tall, young man whose gait she would’ve recognized anywhere. A former athlete, a pro basketballer, an aspiring golfer.
‘James,’ she said.
‘That’s right.’
She felt her heart leap. ‘Is he okay?’
Her father didn’t answer right away.
‘Is he okay?’ she asked again.
‘Just keep watching.’
On the film, James approached another man. Something happened. It looked as if James punched this man, or stabbed him. He came at the man from behind, and a moment later the man was lying prone, blood spreading across the floor.
‘What was that?’
Her father’s response was muffled by the sound of another rat making an attempt on the airlock. ‘Say that again,’ she said impatiently. ‘What did you just say?’
‘I said, he was one of the first to get infected in the States – he responded to a situation on a flight. After that, his decisions don’t make sense. Not to anyone. He killed his boss, that’s what you just saw in the video. And he killed these men here.’
The video footage disappeared, replaced now by photographs of what looked to be dead police officers in an interview room.
‘That’s not possible,’ Missy said.
Her father’s voice was calm and patient. ‘Like I said, Missy, he was infected. He wasn’t himself. He was acting on instinct, instincts created by the virus, by the substance. That’s how it works. We don’t know why he chose those early killings, as opposed to the other people around him, but there’s a lot of evidence to suggest he was hallucinating. He was talking to someone right throughout, someone unseen.’
‘How do you know all this?’ she asked.
‘The Chinese have been monitoring the internet. You think they’d build a facility like this, but not set up advanced warning systems? They had feelers all over the web, in all U.S. government departments, looking for evidence of the substance – even before this place became operational.’
‘Are you still getting information? Is James alive?’
‘We had an enormous glut of information come through in the earliest stages. We watched politicians play the blame game, we watched markets nosedive, then nosedive again – economic collapse, basically – and then there were all the journalists, all the blogs, all the snippets of video thrown up onto YouTube and other sites. Panic, blindly documented online. Since then, though, with every successive day, every successive week, it’s dropped off. Yesterday was the first day we received nothing.’
Missy shared another look with West, whose face was bleeding badly again.
‘That’s never good,’ he muttered. ‘When the Kardashians aren’t tweeting, it’s over. For all of us.’ He smiled grimly.
‘We lost our connection?’
‘No,’ said Missy’s father. ‘As far as we can tell, we’re still connected.’
‘Shit,’ said West.
‘There’s just nothing being uploaded,’ finished Missy’s father.
For Missy, this was a confirmation of her worst fears. ‘And James?’ she asked. ‘Do you know what happened to him?’
‘I’ve been trying to piece it together for a few days now. As best I can tell, he joined a nest in Manhattan, near Times Square.’
‘Why?’
‘His hallucinations drew him to the others, and things get murky there. I’m not sure what happened, but he pops up again as part of a savage attack on residents in four different sections of the city – entering houses and killing people, people who were uninfected or quite possibly immune.’
Missy swallowed hard.
‘It was possible to get good data on James because, for a while, authorities believed he was Patient Zero – excluding the individual on the plane, of course.’
‘Okay,’ said West, ‘and you’re telling us all this now because…? How does this relate to our rat problem and you wanting to turn up the heat?’
Tang’s voice cut in over the speakers, harsh and unappealing. ‘James is confirmation of a pattern I’ve been studying, which I’ve seen again and again – most recently in the experiments you two just ran. The infected leave domes.’
‘Say again.’
‘The infected leave domes, but not permanently.’
‘They gravitate towards nests,’ said Missy’s father helpfully, ‘where they either evolve or die.’
‘We know this,’ said Missy, frustrated. ‘So what?’
Missy’s father persevered. ‘Like I’ve been saying, this journey is apparently dictated by hallucinations. It’s possible that the hallucinations act as an intermediary force, a conduit.’
‘To what?’
‘Extra-terrestrials – or whatever you want to call them. It’s a way for them to interact with infected humans. I know that sounds extreme. I know that sounds, well, out there, but hear me out. James attacked domes. He operated with different groups, and some estimates put his killing spree as high as 300 individuals. He also attacked the immune. He became, in effect, a soldier. But only after he successfully mutated.’
‘And now?’ Missy asked, instinctively knowing the answer to the question but still needing to hear it anyway. ‘Is he alive? Just tell me, will you. He’s dead, isn’t he?’
‘He was gunned down by police. I’m sorry Missy, but he was dead long before that happened. He was dead the moment he became infected.’
She said nothing. She thought about the James she had known, a principled man, a man who had cared for her deeply. He had wanted the best for her in any and every situation. He had worried that her search for her father was taking over her life.
The bitter irony of that one…
‘He stopped being the person you knew and became in effect an alien assassin, Missy. I would’ve shot him under the circumstances, you would’ve two. Police had no choice.’
Missy let her head drop back against the wall, closing her eyes for the briefest of seconds. She almost didn’t care if the rats came for her now. She tried to remember the details of the stupid fight which had ended her engagement. It had all seemed important at the time, future-defining stuff, and yet what was it now? So much dust.
Six years together, the condo they had been renovating… In light of everything that had happened, that fight – whatever had started it – felt shallow and ridiculous. Fighting over household fittings or… something. An argument that had spiraled out of control and become about everything in their relationship.
Or had it been everything…? No. She corrected herself. It had been the same things as always: her fear of commitment, her dogged search for her father.
Perhaps until now, she had believed she was heading back to that old life with James, had believed it was still possible. She had known it would be a long journey, of course. She had known that James would be changed, just as she was. But despite herself, she had harbored the belief it was still possible. With enough effort, with enough desire… with enough raw willpower.
But now none of that would happen. It was beyond doubt. And worse than that, she looked set to share James’s fate. What if the rats didn’t hold off, what if they infected her? What if she began to hallucinate?
Before these thoughts could get the better of her, jacking up her fear levels, she reminded herself that she had already been infected once, a long time ago. She was free of hallucinations because her father had made sure she was never a conduit. How many years had he given her that awful day in 1994? Twenty?
She had to trust him now, even if he had lied about her brother.
Her father’s voice returned through the ceiling speakers. ‘All right,’ he said ‘so I’m guessing it’s getting pretty warm in there now. We’ve got the heat up as far as it’ll go.’
It was more than warm. There was a layer of sweat covering Missy’s face, but she couldn’t get at it, couldn’t deal with the itchiness due to the Hazmat suit.
‘You still haven’t told us how this heat’s going to help,’ West said, his British accent giving his voice an incongruously humorous edge. ‘I love a good sauna, but this is kind of extreme, no?’
This time it was Tang’s voice which came from the ceiling. ‘Evaporation,’ he said. ‘Dehydration. It’s you versus the rats.’
‘Us versus the rats? Awesome.’
‘You’re larger,’ said Tang. ‘You’re going to be able to endure longer.’
‘The protein,’ said Missy, suddenly understanding.
‘That’s right,’ said Tang. ‘The protein. One of the things I’ve been trying to do at this facility for years now is separate the protein from water. We know it acts as some kind of key, unlocking genetic drives. We’re pretty sure it’s inserted into the atmosphere as the substance arrives, but it’s distinct from the substance. It enters water. It’s in all the water on this planet, except where you get a dome. All our testing on domes shows the same thing, including the test you just ran. The protein is filtered out by the dome.’
Missy’s father cut in again, ‘I should stress this is just a theory, but your life depends on it, so hopefully a good theory.’
‘Go on,’ said Missy.
Missy’s father continued. ‘We think Protein Z, as we’re calling it, is the reason the infected flee domes. We think it’s the reason James fled the airport. There’s evidence that infected cells become necrotic when deprived of Protein Z.’
‘Z for zombie?’ asked West warily.
‘Correct,’ said Tang.
West shook his head, frowning. ‘Why would the aliens have a dome like that if it just kills the infected? How does that help them, killing their own?’
‘It doesn’t kill the infected unless they stay,’ said Tang. ‘It simply encourages them to leave. Again, this is speculation based on limited experiments, many of which were unsuccessful or contradictory, but we think it’s some kind of test.’
‘Test?’ Missy was trying to puzzle out what he meant, but she was too confused. She was relieved when her father continued the explanation.
‘A test of the hallucinations. This is where Tang and I differ, of course, but he believes the substance is a weapon.’
Tang interjected, ‘An advanced, intergalactic biological weapon. I think it builds armies, and the domes test alien control over said armies.’
Missy had to close her eyes again to process this.
‘If the hallucinations don’t work for some reason,’ she said, speaking slowly from a too-dry mouth, ‘then the infected don’t leave the dome.’
‘Correct,’ said Tang. ‘It’s almost as if they don’t know they need to leave the dome. They don’t know it will help them. They die without realizing, without understanding they can save themselves.’
‘Because there’s no hallucination there to tell them,’ said West, clearly also struggling to speak with a parched mouth.
‘Yes,’ said Missy’s father. ‘The hallucination informs them of salvation just beyond the dome.’
‘No,’ said West, ‘wait a minute, a moment ago you were telling us infected aliens attack the dome? Do they flee or do they attack? I’m confused.’
‘Both,’ said Missy’s father. ‘They begin by leaving. That’s the test of the hallucination.’
‘But then?’ Missy asked.
‘Then we think the hallucination arranges a nest, which is the genetic drive where mutations occur. The mutation phase is deadly. For a huge number of the infected, mutation fails. They die. But for those who triumph over it, the first mission begins.’
‘Which is?’
‘An attack on the dome they just escaped,’ said Tang, ‘shutting it down by killing everyone and everything inside it.’
‘That’s right,’ said Missy’s father. ‘That’s always the first order of business. Then attacks on other domes, or on immune individuals. That where the zombie part comes from.’
‘Like James did,’ said Missy.
‘Like James did. But we don’t know what comes after that because so far all the infected worldwide have been attacking domes. That’s as far as we’ve gone with this.’
West said, ‘Or as far as we had gone before the internet went quiet.’
‘And that’s why we’ve got people closing in on this facility?’ Missy said. ‘Tang, you set off a dome here, and it’s getting big? Am I right?’
Tang said nothing.
Missy realized something else. ‘That’s why the rats want to get out of here, isn’t it? They’re not interested in attacking me or West because they’re in pain, and they know the only way to end the pain is to get clear of the dome.’
‘That’s our best guess,’ said Missy’s father. ‘Yes. The bigger the dome, the more painful it is to infected animals within it. And the more deadly. A bigger dome also attracts more attacks.’
‘They’re attacking the airlock because they want to get clear of the dome Tang’s triggered in the vault?’ West asked Missy. ‘Did I understand that right?’
‘Yeah. That’s why they wanted out of the pen in the first place. That’s why they’ve been so crazy.’ Missy raised her voice, looking up at the CCTV cameras. ‘How big is the dome now?’
‘Enormous,’ said Tang. ‘And growing exponentially.’
Chapter 19
Somewhere in the Gobi
Missy thought of the soldier in the vault. If everything she was being told was true, that soldier must’ve been experiencing something close to agony. Missy immediately foresaw a problem, though. ‘The first infection in a new location spawns a new dome, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And then all the infected leave, because staying put would result in pain.’
‘Infected cells turning necrotic, yes.’
‘Presumably, if hallucinations don’t work, if cells turn necrotic like that without the infected creature leaving the dome, the creature dies? What happens then? Does that end the dome?’
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‘Correct,’ said Tang, with something very close to admiration in his voice. ‘That ends the dome, too.’
‘So how are you keeping the dome going?’ Missy asked.
‘Protein Z,’ said Tang. ‘Early on in our research, we discovered that Protein Z could be supplied to an infected creature intravenously.’
‘Essentially,’ said Missy’s father, ‘it’s as simple as injecting water, replacing that which the dome filters out.’
Missy reconsidered. With this new information, she understood that the soldier who had triggered the dome was not in pain at all. ‘So the soldier who triggered the dome is hallucinating, is being willed out of the dome, but he can’t leave because of the vault?’ Before either her father or Tang could respond, she finished the thought. ‘And since the soldier who triggered the dome isn’t leaving, nor dying, the dome continues to expand.’
‘Correct,’ said Tang, sounding proud.
‘How big do you want it to get?’ But even as she asked this, Missy knew. ‘You want it as big as you can get it, right? If you can spread this dome so it covers the entire planet, you filter out all Protein Z.’
‘The water cycle will see to that,’ said Tang, ‘yes.’
Missy through back to the tour her father had given her. ‘And then you draw the attacking forces into the hangers and you gas them. They’re mutated. If they’re attacking domes, they’ve definitely already been through the nest stage – and successfully, too. You draw them in, you gas them, and then…’ It all suddenly made sense to her. She laughed at the simplicity of it. ‘You should be able to reason with them. If all that succeeds, you’ll have an army that’s just like me. Mutated, but free of hallucinations, free of the alien dog collar.’
It was unbearably hot now, so hot Missy could hardly think. Sweat was clouding her vision and her body was soaked. She was feeling ill. It went beyond simple dehydration, beyond a simple headache. It felt like what she imagined endless rounds of chemo to be. ‘That’s why you rushed this,’ she mumbled. ‘My father designed this facility, so the idea’s out there. You’re worried other nations are trying to do the same thing, but you can’t allow that. For this to be worth the investment, it has to be just you. Am I right? You alone end up with a mutated army, you alone control alien biotech.’
