Summon the Nightmare

by J. J. Carlson

  Janson let him drop into her arms and held him there for a beat before placing his feet on the ground.

  “I hate it when you do that,” Eugene grunted.

  “Exactly.”

  He rolled his eyes, then nodded toward the would-be suicide bomber. “Let’s check it out.” He made his way forward, clearly displaying his weapon to encourage people to move out of his way. When he reached the dead terrorist, he grimaced at the damage.

  There was a round hole in the top of the man’s head. The bullet had traveled through his skull at an angle, cutting through his body and exiting at his hip. Eugene spied the detonator, still clenched in the man’s hand. “Get everyone away from here. We need to establish a cordon.”

  Janson took a deep breath and began shouting for people to move away, warning them about the bomb.

  Instantly, the crowd rushed away from them, leaving behind an unfortunate few who had been shot or trampled.

  “Let’s move back,” Eugene said. He and Janson retreated, carrying out injured civilians as they went. Once they were at a safe distance, Eugene began treating the wounded while Janson stood watch.

  “You know,” he said as he directed a woman to put pressure on a bullet hole in her side. “Your boyfriend’s a pretty good shot.”

  She scoffed at the understatement. “Yes, he is.”

  Eugene shifted forward to examine a deep laceration on a man’s face. “So, you’re not denying it?”

  She glanced at him. “Why would I? He might be the best sniper on the planet.”

  “Not that. Are you saying you two are official? Like, Facebook official.”

  A smile threatened to break through her professional demeanor. “I suppose we are.”

  Eugene nodded slowly. His thoughts wandered to a woman with dark, curly hair and a devil-may-care gleam in her eyes. He often thought of Susana Espinosa in times like this, when surrounded by pain and suffering, when the world seemed beyond hope of rescue. “Good. I’m glad.”

  Ford’s voice broke into their earpieces. “To be clear, our relationship is still none of your damn business.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Eugene said. “You two are just…horrifying. To look at, I mean. The mental image of you two together makes me—” he blew his cheeks out, then pretended to dry heave.

  Ford let out a long sigh. “Anyway. The pilot says we’ve been recalled. Get your asses to the roof, and we’ll pick you up.”

  36

  The New York State Library

  Albany, New York

  The recent passage of a cold front had doused eastern New York with cool, dry air. At five minutes before eleven AM, the temperature was a comfortable sixty-seven degrees, and the breeze was just strong enough to lift the flags around the Empire State Plaza.

  Audrey Stokes reclined in a plastic chair, basking in the sun. The view from atop the New York State Library was incredible. She had a front row seat to the most important experiment ever conducted by mankind. Though her throne and crown were distastefully shabby—a lawn chair and a wide-brimmed straw hat—she felt like a queen. Her loyal subjects were finishing their preparations, and the show was about to begin.

  She smiled. The attack itself had been set in stone for over a week, but she didn’t know where it would take place until early this morning. In order to avoid the watchful eyes of the U.S. government, she’d created a pool of potential targets then randomly selected one with the roll of a pair of dice—literally. The beauty of her plan was that it could take place in any urban area with only minor adjustments. By sheer luck, she landed here, staring up at the angular Corning Tower and down at the Plaza reflecting pools. From her vantage point, she felt like she was in the world’s largest throne room. The buildings on either side of the reflecting pools were her praetorian guard. At the far end, beyond the red-brick walkways, was the New York State Capitol building. It was grandiose with gray and red steeples and a broad facade, like that of a French Palace. But it stood lower than her guards as if bowing low, begging her for mercy.

  But there would be no mercy. This wasn’t a war—it was a test. She cared less for the citizens of Albany than a scientist cared for a rat. Humanity had its chance to make a better world, and it had failed. Now, it was up to her and the surviving members of Katharos to clean up the mess.

  She glanced at her wrist, watching the seconds tick by. In less than two minutes, hundreds of firebombs would go off simultaneously. The bombs were simple in design, using payloads that could be purchased at any fireworks store, matchsticks for detonators, and analog clocks for timers. Her soldiers had impersonated tourists, mail carriers, maintenance crews, and government workers in order to infiltrate the towering buildings around the plaza. They’d hidden the bombs in toilet paper dispensers, tissue boxes, filing cabinets, and anywhere else that would carry a fire. The point was not to burn the buildings down—in fact, she fully expected the fire suppression systems to extinguish the blaze—the point was to herd thousands of guinea pigs to ground level. Once there, the situation would…escalate.

  Law enforcement would arrive in minutes, along with paramedics, firefighters, and other civil servants. But the big guns—the counter-terrorism units—would be far behind. They were busy in Manhattan, chasing wild geese. Audrey had made contact with an eager jihadist group in New Jersey. They were ready and willing to sacrifice themselves for their cause, but they lacked weapons and explosives. She provided enough C4 and ball-bearings for a dozen suicide vests and unleashed them upon the city. She also made phony communications, which she knew the NSA would intercept, to Katharos agents near the city. The response from the Federal Government would be swift and decisive. She doubted if more than one of the twelve suicide bombers would even have the chance to detonate his vest, but it didn’t matter. The guard dogs would be busy hunting ghosts while she and her men carried out a different, seemingly harmless attack.

  The minute and second hands on her watch clicked into place. She glanced at the exposed skin on her forearm, studying a pair of dark stripes on her skin. Like the lines on an old pregnancy test, they indicated a positive result. She was a carrier—a new breed of humans that had been altered by Lukas Woodfall’s most recent weapon.

  She shared his vision for a new world, so she agreed to serve as the first test subject. The alteration was painless; she puffed twice on an inhaler, and that was it. Twelve hours later, the stripes appeared, first as red marks, then solid black lines. The weapon had modified her genome, which in turn triggered melanocytes in a very specific region on her arm to boost their melanin production. The pigment showed through her epidermis exactly as it should have. The aerosolized weapon had worked flawlessly.

  But airborne transmission of the gene-editor needed proof of practice, not concept. They needed to know if it would still work when dispersed across a wide area, and what percentage of exposed subjects would manifest the stripes. The editor was carried by highly contagious viruses, phages, and bacteria. Theoretically, if the aerosols could infect even one subject in the plaza, the stripes would spread throughout the entire human race within a few years. That is, if a cure wasn’t developed to stop its progression.

  That was phase two of their little experiment—to see how long it would take the Center for Disease Control to create a cure. Lukas believed it would take months; she suspected they would have a prototype developed in days. The CDC understood the risk of genomic weapons and had been working on ways to combat them for years. But when the cure was tested, Audrey would be watching. She would learn how the government implemented vaccination programs and therapeutic treatments. She would learn their points of vulnerability.

  All around her, alarms began to sound. There had been no explosions, and the air was clear of smoke, but she still heard sirens in the distance as firefighters were dispatched. Hundreds of people began filing out of the buildings, some running, but most strolling casually as if the tiny bombs had been part of an elaborate prank.

  Audrey glanced at the
parked cars that encircled the plaza. Eight of them had been disgorging trillions upon trillions of viruses into the air for over an hour. At exactly 11:08, they also began releasing bacteria laced with bacteriophages—tiny viruses that replicated within bacteria. And every phage and virus had the potential to rewrite human DNA.

  The attack was over. Her soldiers had pulled it off without a single word exchanged between them. There had been no email traffic, no phone calls, and no whispered conversations for the government to track. And soon, mountains of scientific data would begin pouring into Katharos servers. Hospitals would transfer records through easily-hacked communique, afflicted guinea pigs would post pictures of themselves on social media, and news outlets would speculate endlessly.

  There would be a manhunt for her agents, but she doubted any of them would be caught. By the time anyone realized a bio-weapon had been used, her people would be long gone. Besides, she had backup plans for her backup plans. There were five automated laboratories hidden around the world that would manufacture and release Lukas’s endgame, even if she was caught.

  Rising to her feet, she retrieved a note from her pocket and tucked it under the leg of the plastic chair. She entered the museum and kept her chin tucked as she made her way outside. A car was waiting for her, and the driver was grinning like an idiot. She opened the door and sank into the seat beside him.

  “Where to?”

  She inhaled deeply as if smelling a rose. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing can stop us now.”

  37

  Washington D.C.

  Less than three hours after the attacks in New York, the Senate Chamber was as full as it had ever been in the past six months. Politicians jockeyed into position behind their mahogany desks, eager to put on a show for the American public.

  Leopold Buchanan folded his arms in front of his chest and watched the strutting peacocks with disgust. There were a thousand things he’d rather be doing, but a bullish senator from Massachusetts, who happened to chair the Committee on National Security and Governmental Affairs, demanded that he be present. The senator planned to slip away from the chamber and meet with the Director of National intelligence in private—after the news outlets gathered a few minutes of footage, of course.

  Buchanan had little patience for bureaucracy, but he knew the senator would take up twice as much of his time if he skipped the meeting. He scanned the grandiose room, trying to distract himself from the irritation growing in his chest. The chamber had been built in 1859 and was lavishly decorated in hopes of impressing foreign dignitaries. The lower level, where the Senators sat, had been festooned with subdued colors to give it an air of civility. Dark marble pillars interrupted blankets of indigo on the walls. The carpet, a similarly tranquil blue, was patterned with violet and gold. It was ironic, considering how cutthroat politics could be.

  Yellow viewing galleries, adorned with intricate molding and marble busts of former vice presidents, surrounded the main floor. Every seat in the Press Gallery was filled, and reporters crowded at the edges. The Visitor’s Gallery was empty because of the lockdown. The Diplomat’s Gallery was dotted with dignitaries showing their sympathy and quiet support for a nation under attack.

  Buchanan stood in a doorway at the corner of the Diplomat’s Gallery, partially concealing himself from the roaming eyes of the cameras. He loathed being in the spotlight, unlike the blowhards below.

  The presiding officer acknowledged a Senator from New Jersey, who stood behind her desk and began spouting rhetoric. She started by thanking the first responders of New York for their heroism, then the troops overseas for fighting to keep this great nation safe. Buchanan tuned her out when she began to brag about her own, valiant efforts to fight Muslim extremists. She had never seen combat, not even from a distance.

  His gaze turned to the middle distance, casting the scene into a blur. He would gladly give up a year’s salary to trade places with the Director of the CIA, who was manning the Counter-Terrorism Center at that moment. Or maybe Santiago Torres, who was probably debriefing his enhanced soldiers in Hillcrest. That was where real progress was made in the fight against terror, not here.

  A flash of movement passed through the corner of his vision, and he turned his head. He studied the Visitor’s Gallery, searching for whatever had caught his attention. Every seat was empty, and no one stood on the stairs around the tiered chairs. Then, a section of the wall seemed to move in and out of focus. He rubbed his eyes, thinking a speck of dust was affecting his vision. The disturbance in the air was gone, but the sinking feeling in his stomach remained.

  The railing at the edge of the balcony shimmered slightly as if passed by a wisp of heat. Buchanan’s eyes widened, and he fought to maintain his composure. If he was right, something unthinkable was about to happen, and there would be an investigation of unprecedented scope and depth. He was the only person in the room who understood the hidden danger, and he must not allow his face to show it.

  His entire body trembled as he fought to restrain himself. He desperately wanted to cry out, to tell everyone to run for their lives. But to do so would be a declaration of his own guilt—his knowledge of the secret weapons program beneath Baltimore—and deep down, he knew it was too late.

  Jarrod held the iron railing with one hand, breathing deeply to taste the air. He let go and dropped to the main floor, absorbing the impact with his knees and hips to deaden the sound of his landing. None of the senators noticed; they were either pretending to pay attention to the blustering woman at the front of the room or simply waiting for their turn to speak.

  Maintaining his armor’s invisibility, he strode alongside the curved rows of desks. Moments later, he found who he was looking for. Heath Harrington was hunched over his desk, chewing on the end of a pen.

  Everything was in place. There was no reason to wait. Jarrod took wide steps, brushing past a few senators who turned around in confusion. He stopped in front of Harrington’s desk and rotated the orbs in his armor to color himself jet black. The Oklahoma Senator had paused to scribble a note, and he jerked in his seat when he looked up.

  It took a moment for onlookers to register his presence, and then a delayed chorus of gasps echoed through the room. Jarrod glanced at the cameras swiveling to face him. Then, with two swift movements, he brought a closed fist down on Harrington’s desk, splitting it in half. He seized the senator with a clawed hand; his thumb cut through the man’s cheek and curled around his palate. His fingers cut into the sinuses and pierced the nose. He dragged the senator through the remains of the desk and shouted, “Anyone moves, and I’ll rip his head off!”

  A dozen Secret Service Agents poured into the room, but they held their ground near the doors when they saw Jarrod’s hostage. The presiding officer and a few senators rose to their feet but made no move to help. They watched with horrified expressions, some of them gripping their faces out of sympathy, as Harrington kicked and screamed in agony.

  “This man was elected into office by hundreds of thousands of people,” Jarrod said as he turned down the center aisle. “He has remained in office for decades, granting favors to rapists and pedophiles, including hundreds of cult members in the city of Holy Mountain.”

  He heard the internal components in the cameras moving as the reporters zoomed in to get a better shot. “You’ve heard stories about what happened on the mountain—that it was attacked by an armed militia, that the mayor was dragged away by a wild animal. Lies. It was me. All of it was me. And I’m not finished yet.” He lifted the senator and slammed him down on the wide desk at the lower tier of the Senate Dais. Blood splattered on the Legislative Clerk, who turned her face away and let out a soft whimper.

  One of the Secret Service agents edged forward, trying to sneak up behind him. Without looking, Jarrod pointed a finger in his direction and roared, “I said don’t move!”

  The man froze in his tracks and cast a worried glance at his fellow agents. They gave tiny shrugs, uncertain of how to proceed.

  �
��Each of you shares his guilt.” Jarrod pointed at every man and woman on the Dais. “You’ve let a cancer grow in your ranks, allowing it to spread corruption and evil to every corner of the country. And you—” he whirled to face the cameras. “You have hidden beneath a blanket of ignorance while children are tortured and molested in your own neighborhoods.”

  The armor on his thigh shifted, moving away from a black lump to reveal a six-inch dagger. He snatched it up and held it in front of the Assistant Secretary. “Kill him, and I will cease my hunt.”

  The assistant shook his head and curled his hands beneath the desk. “I—I can’t.”

  Jarrod shifted his blank visage toward the Press Gallery and addressed the reporters. “There are flash drives beneath each of your seats. They are filled with evidence of Harrington’s deeds and lifestyle. I copied the data directly from the private servers at his ranch.”

  Harrington made a gurgling noise. A drowning man’s cry for help.

  Jarrod whirled to face the four politicians behind the wide desk. “Kill him. He is going to die anyway, and it will be a mercy compared to what I will do. I’m giving you a chance to prove you aren’t worthless cowards.” He held out the knife, and they shrunk away as if the blade was radioactive.

  Jarrod shook his head, raised the knife, and plunged it into the desk beside Harrington’s leg, burying it to the hilt. “So be it.”

  As the cameras and every eye in the room watched, Jarrod dug four talons into the senator’s skin, just above his pelvis. He pulled upward, sawing through tendons and tissue as he went, opening the senator from navel to neck.

  A pistol roared as one of the agents pulled the trigger. The round struck Jarrod above the ear. He ignored it and tightened his grip on Harrington’s face. He crushed the facial bones into a pulp, then withdrew his hand and wiped it on the Legislative Clerk’s jacket. She retched, spilling vomit onto her lap, then slumped in her chair, unconscious.