The Moreau Quartet: Volume One: 1

by S. Andrew Swann

  Someone was working with some very dangerous stuff here.

  Nohar backed up and took out his camera. He started taking pictures of the door and the room beyond.

  He looked at the lock and decided there wasn’t any time to try to open the door. Not that he wanted to go anywhere that required a full environmental suit.

  Nohar backtracked from the door and ducked in each office, hoping to get lucky.

  He did.

  In the third office he found a comm unit running, in the midst of some sort of database search. Its owner hadn’t logged out of the system, leaving Nohar with a comm that still had full access to everything.

  Nohar slipped behind the comm and figured he had ten minutes to get it to tell him what was going on.

  Chapter 20

  Nohar took a ramcard out of his wallet, his record of The Necron Avenger’s public net activity. He felt okay overwriting it; he didn’t need that information anymore. He slipped the card into the comm’s data slot and tried to call up a directory, a database, or some sort of menu.

  Nohar managed to back up from the financial information he was looking at until he hit a menu listing the databases he could open. There were the typical titles, “Accounting,” “Inventory,” and “Personnel.”

  But there was a group of other databases with more cryptic names, “Rangoon,” “Tangier,” “Congo,” and “Niger.”

  Nohar entered the Rangoon database and was confronted with a history of the Drips. Vectors, case studies, maps of outbreaks, pathology, demographics. Everything that anyone could possibly want to know about Herpes Rangoon, down to its genetic structure.

  He already knew that they were tracking the Drips from the information Necron had given him, so he only scanned the information before backing up and trying another heading. His next try was “Tangier.”

  What he saw was a hepatitis variant. This wasn’t a disease that was making the news. According to the database it was confined to the canines inhabiting the Hollywood Hills. Nohar thought back to one-eyed Elijah, and the other dogs, the ones who were falling to some sickness. The people here were tracking that disease. Looking at the information gathered here, it was obvious that something odd was happening. Their reports on transmission vectors were as detailed as the ones for the Drips. The case studies of the disease’s progress were as complete—and this was for a community of moreaus that never saw the inside of a hospital.

  The genetic information was here, too. This time Nohar paid a little more attention. He wasn’t a scientist, but he was beginning to get an ominous feeling from the databases. They didn’t seem to be the product of doctors interested in curing, or even attempting to learn about a disease. The database seemed more a critique of the virus. Scattered throughout were words like “effective transmission,” “efficient progression,” and “optimum prognosis.” As if they were rating the virus on how well it spread.

  He scanned through the Tangier database, becoming more and more alarmed, until he came to a list of concluding comments, one of which was absolutely chilling.

  “Hepatitis Tangier is not recommended due to an unacceptably high chance of transmission to humans.”

  Nohar started downloading the database to his ramcard. The comm flashed a warning to him, the comm’s voice lost under the sounds of the fire alarms. “This is a secure database. Use is being logged. Do you still wish to complete this operation?”

  Nohar hit “Y” on the comm’s keyboard. His finger was shaking.

  He had begun to realize that he wasn’t looking through a medical database. He was looking at a military one. He was looking at an analysis of biological warfare agents.

  He looked back at the Rangoon file, and found what he had missed before. All the signs that he was looking at something someone had engineered in a lab. More acceptable because the transmission rate to humans was nil. . . .

  “Good lord,” Nohar whispered to himself. He had expected to find some signs of a dark experiment, someone testing propagation of the herpes virus. He had never expected to find out someone had engineered the disease in the first place.

  “Congo,” was a flu virus. It had apparently ripped through the moreau population in The States about two years ago. There had been a few fatalities, among the very old and very young. Nohar skipped to the conclusions—Congo had been abandoned because it was unstable, prone to mutate.

  The last one, “Niger,” was the most recent file. They had just completed the engineering of the organism. There were only two case studies, and there was no question that the victims had been purposely infected. Both had died within a week of infection.

  The virus attacked the connective tissue of the body, and caused the internal organs to die off one by one. The victims bled from every orifice, the blood filled every cavity in their bodies. It refused to clot. And near the end, the rabbit that had been infected was vomiting up a black bloody mess that included the lining of his stomach, throat, and tongue. By then the file said the virus had undergone “extreme amplification,” which meant that every drop of that rabbit’s blood had enough virus in it to infect most of Compton.

  The bastards had engineered a variant of Ebola Zaire. A variant that only affected moreaus. Somehow they had found a common thread in the genetics of all the moreaus that they could base their diseases on. Nohar thought of Elijah again—

  All of them, all moreaus, shared some genes with those first creations. Something about their virus needed that to spread.

  The conclusions found that the virus wasn’t lethal to humans.

  Suddenly, his concerns for his own safety, even that of his son, seemed petty. He was suddenly looking at the possibility of a genocidal plague in the hands of people who might actually use it. Not just that, but in the hands of people who could use it most effectively. They had been doing these studies for years, studying the propagation of these viruses. If they wanted to use their Ebola Niger, they would introduce it at multiple points, in victims who would assure the maximum spread of the virus. No quarantine would be able to stop it. . . .

  The ramcard popped out. He had copied all of the databases.

  Nohar reached up for the card, looking up as he suddenly sensed another presence moving toward the office. The smell of humans was drifting toward him, and he could almost make out the sound of footsteps beneath the noise of the klaxons.

  The owner of the footsteps knew exactly where he was going. A pink in a black uniform turned the corner of the office. He was armed with an M-303 caseless assault rifle. He leveled the oversized weapon at Nohar.

  “Hold it right there!”

  Nohar was already diving behind the desk as the guy let loose. The jackhammer of the rifle upstaged the klaxon as the office began shedding debris around Nohar. Paneling splintered, acoustical tile fell from the ceiling, fluorescent tubes shattered, and the comm exploded into a hundred fragments.

  There was no room for negotiation with this guy.

  Nohar felt a surge of adrenaline as he pulled out the Vind. He didn’t have much time. His only advantage was the guy was firing wildly into the room, and had taken out the only light sources.

  He waited for the gunfire to track into one corner of the room, then he sprang toward the opposite end, bringing the Vind to bear on the man silhouetted in the doorway. The guy caught the movement, and started to bring the rifle to bear, the bullets cutting a swath through the office paneling.

  Nohar pumped off the two shots left in the Vind, one high, one low. The first caught the guy in the upper chest, the second in the left thigh. He wore body armor, but the first shot still knocked him backward. The second cut his leg out from under him, and he fell back into the hallway.

  Nohar ran up and kicked the rifle away from the guy. He had managed to avoid killing the bastard, but Nohar couldn’t bring himself to feel good about it. The hallway was rank with the smell of the blood that was pooling un
der the guy’s legs, turning the blue carpet purplish-black.

  “Go on,” the guy said. His teeth were clenched against pain, and he sounded short of breath. “Kill me, that’s what you’re designed to do.”

  Nohar knelt over him, and saw that he was looking at a kid—at least in human terms. He wasn’t better than nineteen or twenty. Still, Nohar held the empty Vind up to the kid’s head and asked, “Who are you people? Is this a government operation?”

  The kid spat at him.

  Nohar didn’t want to waste time. Everything was going to be converging on this office, the kid was just the first. He held the gun on the kid while he grabbed the M-303.

  He was about to try another question, when he heard a door open down the hall, by the fire stairs. The elevators were back there, too. The kid smiled, and Nohar wanted to smack him.

  Nohar holstered his Vind and ran in the opposite direction, toward the giant biohazard door. Before he reached it, he ducked into another office. This one had a window overlooking the parking lot. He shouldered the M-303 and picked up an office chair. He used it to smash out the window.

  Below him he could see the flashers of the police and fire departments, and the crowd of people circling the building. He was in trouble. He had spent too long at the comm. He had planned to slip out with the last of the evacuees; now he was surrounded by cops and about to be hit by an assault squad with automatic rifles.

  He looked out through the window. The wind whipped at his face as he looked four stories down to the pavement. Too far to jump, he’d break bones for sure. And police were already running toward the building. The crowd was all looking in his direction now.

  “Fuck,” Nohar said, pulling himself out onto the small ledge under the window.

  He extended the claws on his hands to get some purchase on the concrete, and it made his fingers feel as if they were being torn apart.

  There was a similar ledge on the floor below, and he desperately needed to make it. There were the sounds of shouting and commotion behind and below him, as he faced the wall of the building. More important right now were the sounds of running feet coming down the hall toward the office he’d just left.

  There was little choice now. Nohar reached down so his hands gripped the ledge he crouched on. Then he pushed his feet off the ledge. His body fell from in front of the window, dropping from sight as the gunman reached the entrance to the office. He jerked to a stop that almost pulled his shoulders from their sockets. He held on to the ledge, feeling as if his claws would tear from his fingers. He fell against the window below. He swung a foot back to kick out the glass. He managed one solid kick, shattering the window. He let go, allowing his forward momentum to carry him into the blinds and the office beyond the broken window. Glass bit into him as he rolled across the floor at the foot of the window.

  He got to his feet in a twin of the office above. He ran for the door. Even though the adrenaline was firing through his body, sharpening everything, he could feel where his body was screaming enough. His knee felt as if he had blown it out again. Every joint in both arms was on fire, especially the joints in his fingers. His claws felt as if they had locked in place.

  He hobbled out of the office, through a forest of cubicles, and tried to think of an escape route. The more he thought of it, the less likely there was going to be one. He was going to have to deal with the security goons or the police. And it was looking more and more as if the police were the lesser evil.

  Nohar crashed through the door to the fire stairs. He could hear a commotion a floor above. The security goons were hitting the stairs as well, trying to catch up with him.

  The flights were side-by-side, with little gap between them. Nohar ran halfway down the flight and vaulted over the railing, stumbling on the concrete of the next lower flight. He almost fell headfirst into the landing, but he kept moving. He could hear the footsteps of the security goons above him.

  The fire door on this floor was ajar, and Nohar pulled it open and slipped inside. He found himself in a large room, the walls piled high with packages and letters. There were several desks where packages were in the midst of being sorted.

  Nohar stopped in front of one desk that was piled high with outgoing packages. He had no time, but he needed to get all the information off of him, he couldn’t risk either the security goons or the police confiscating it.

  He reached in, pulled out a handful of ramcard-sized packages. He dropped all but one with an address in Culver City that he’d remember. Opened the plastic as carefully as he could, though his rush left a jagged tear in the package. He slipped the incriminating ramcards inside—his copy of Manuel’s find, and the ramcard he’d just copied—and ran the opening through the sealer mounted in the desk. The plastic fused with a hiss, sealing the ramcards inside. The package didn’t look great, but if they weren’t looking for it, it might get through.

  Nohar shoved the package back into the pile and ran for the other side of the room. Behind him he could hear the security goons slip through the fire doors. For some reason, they didn’t fire at him.

  Nohar crashed through the door on the other side of the mailroom, and came face-to-face with a half-dozen policemen in heavy padded body armor. They carried long rods which they were pointing at several corners of the hallway, and one held the leash for a black unengineered dog who had been busy sniffing the base of the wall until Nohar had appeared in the hallway.

  Nohar looked at the Bomb Squad guys, raised his hands, and said, “I surrender.”

  Chapter 21

  The police weren’t that gentle, especially with the rifle and the gun on him. All the while, Nohar kept telling himself it was better than being shot. Though, after that victory wore off, he found himself in a bit of a bind. The cops still wanted Nohar Rajasthan for questioning in the Royd murder, and they had a weapons charge on him at the very least, and it didn’t take a signed confession for them to figure that he had something to do with the phoned-in bomb threat.

  He was driven to the Pasadena station in the back of a much-too-small Dodge Havier, his hands held behind him by nylon strapping because the cops didn’t have handcuffs big enough for him.

  When they got him to the station, they cut the nylon off and dumped him in a holding cell. The cell was a concrete cube with a single steel door. The unpainted walls were swathed in graffiti, and the concrete bench was too low and too narrow for Nohar to sit on. Nohar stood there for what seemed like hours, trying to think himself out of this mess.

  All he got out of it was the full effect of an adrenaline crash. In about half an hour he was crushed by fatigue, leaning against the cold walls, feeling his muscles cramp, every joint in his body hurting as if it were grinding broken bones together. His hands felt as if they would be locked into the same arthritic claws Maria was left with. He bled from enough places from broken glass and shrapnel that the cops had handled him with latex gloves. His body felt like one massive bruise.

  Eventually, after about four hours, the cops came for him. This time they had handcuffs that fit.

  They led him out of the holding cell, and Nohar tried to walk without limping. Three cops escorted him, and he could smell their tension. He knew if he made a suspicious move, he would probably get a bullet somewhere inconvenient.

  He passed lines of desks, and as he passed, the pinks stopped what they were doing to crane their necks and watch the huge moreau walk by. There were a few whispered words between them, and Nohar could pick up an occasional word here or there.

  “—there’s the Fed case—”

  “—shoot-out with the Beverly Hills cops—”

  “—why a morey would do Royd like that, he was almost one of them—”

  “—probably another psycho. Killing’s in their genes you know—”

  His escort dropped him in a windowless interview room—a featureless place with walls of acoustical tile. There were a few unco
mfortable chairs, a metal table, and a mirror running the length of one wall. Nohar looked at the mirror and sat down facing it. There was little else he could do, and it felt good to finally get off his feet.

  They kept him waiting for another hour. Long enough that, despite everything, Nohar began to doze off. He suspected they’d been watching him all during the wait, because the door slammed open just when he was nodding off.

  Nohar glanced up at the door, didn’t see anyone, and had to lower his gaze until he saw a short man. He was balding on top, and wore a small beard and mustache, as if the hair were slowly sliding down his head. He placed a portable comm on the table between them and looked at Nohar. Even standing, his eye level didn’t reach above Nohar’s chest.

  “I’m Detective Gilbertez.” His tone was disarming. “Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?”

  Nohar’s first impulse was to say, “A lawyer,” but he held back because he wanted to hear what this guy was going to say. He just shook his head and looked at Gilbertez and tried to read what was going on behind his impassive face.

  “Fair enough,” Gilbertez looked at his comm and flipped open the screen. “Nohar Rajasthan.” He glanced up from the screen. “Don’t feel as if you have to respond to me. Just listen.” He looked back down at the comm, still talking. “Never changed your name. Old-fashioned, or did you just not care?”

  Nohar followed Gilbertez’s suggestion, and stayed quiet.

  “Most of the moreaus we see through here are half your age—most shed the surname. Like the place-origin names the INS handed out, way back when, were some sort of slave name.” He shook his head. Nohar wondered if he ever paused for a breath. “Says here that you were once licensed as a private investigator, but you let that lapse about ten years ago. What’ve you been doing since then?”