by RS McCoy
Aida huffed in anger—not because he was wrong, but because he was right. That Dr. Parr had been different, that he would never give the wrong coordinates. Somehow, it was easier to believe in brain-eating aliens than doubt her mentor.
“A bug in his brain killed him because of my report?” she asked him.
Vincent nodded slowly.
Her vision clouded with tears of unfairness. How could she be to blame? Even if it was true, how could she have known? She was only doing her job. She was trying to save humanity.
“Dr. Perkins, I understand that this is difficult, but each moment of delay, more bugs kill their hosts. In the time since we started this meeting, there have been seven deaths,” Dr. Arrenstein said barely above a whisper.
“I suppose those are my fault as well?”
Dr. Arrenstein’s mouth turned down as he shook his head. “No, Dr. Perkins. Yesterday, Dr. Filmore terminated a colony on Mars, a colony that held one of my very dear friends. A man who was a good friend to all of us.” He looked at Vincent. “He was Maggie’s brother and one of the first agents to become infected. I, for one, have had enough death at the hands of these bugs. You have the power to end this. So end it.”
His tone, his sureness and quiet strength gave her pause. He believed she could save people, what she had been trying to do all along.
Aida knew she would do it. If sacrificing 196 would save lives, then she would do it. They would find another planet. Maybe not in her lifetime, but someday.
Only, she couldn’t.
“I don’t have Sal’s access code if that’s what you’re asking.”
Dr. Arrenstein took it in stride. “No, not directly. The bugs killed Sal without realizing the colony had already been approved. We are hoping they have a contingency plan.”
“I don’t understand.”
The young woman who introduced herself as Dasia Daugherty stepped forward. “The bugs launched this attack after your colony was approved. Their goal is to avoid human colonization of 196, so there must be someone left alive who can terminate the colony. We’re hoping that someone is you.”
For so young a person, she spoke with a confidence that made Aida revere her words.
“I don’t have his code. I told you—”
“That’s why we need to reinfect you.”
Aida stared in shock and horror and revulsion. “That’s disgusting.”
“What?” Vincent fumed.
“It’s not ideal, no,” Dr. Arrenstein said. “But one of the bugs alters memory. If you’re infected with the Slight, it’s possible the bug will be able to give you the code.”
“It’s possible?”
“We have no evidence that the bugs can give memories, only take them away. But they need this as much as we do. So we’re hoping they’ll be able to figure it out.”
“You want to put an alien insect into my brain and hope they figure out how to alter my memory enough to get Sal’s code?” she asked.
“You can be forced if necessary,” Director Filmore spoke for the first time since her arrival.
Dr. Arrenstein put up his hand to block the idea of it. “No, she can’t. Dr. Perkins will agree to this of her own free will, or I won’t do it. I’ve killed enough people today.”
Aida didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t selfish enough to value her life more than thousands of others, but she had no confidence in their proposal. With so little information about the bugs and how they affected the brain, it was difficult to weigh her decision.
So Aida asked the only person she could trust. She twisted in her chair and looked at Theo.
“Are you asking me?”
She nodded.
Theo’s eyes held her gaze as he answered, “I trust Dr. Arrenstein can do what he says.”
Aida twisted back around. “All right, I’ll do it. But I want Maggie to be there.”
“Vince has successfully performed several extractions on y—”
“No. I want Maggie. That’s my only condition.”
Dr. Arrenstein looked at his agent at the back of the room before answering, “Maggie it is.”
CYNTHIA
NEW YORK CENTER FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH, NEW YORK
SEPTEMBER 16, 2232
Dr. Cynthia Medina set down her tablet and used her free hand to scratch the itch at the back of her neck. It was so distracting.
She had work to do.
Tiny particles—smaller than a hydrogen atom—whirled through the hadron collider that looped through the northern portion of the city. On the fourteenth floor, her lab and its wide-reaching equipment were well out of the way of the mundane residents below. The tube itself cut into more than two dozen buildings, but it was free of interference.
Nucleons raced by at speeds so high the human brain could scarcely comprehend it. Then, of course, Dr. Medina didn’t have an average human brain.
The wall of sensors, switches, toggles, and displays looked like the sort of thing they used to fly an interstellar shuttle, except these were devoted to something far more important than mere travel. These lights indicated how many nucleons were colliding, the rate of their conversion from energy to matter, and their speed at collision.
Beside her, Dr. Armstrong tapped the display for matter conversion, like the motion from his hand would somehow alter the reading. “Two point nine percent? That seems pretty high. Did we get new target readings from the committee?”
Cynthia shook her head. “It should be below two percent, as always.” She walked to the end of the panel and made the minor adjustments that would lower the conversion rate. Anything too high was potentially dangerous. Converting too much energy to matter would create a force larger than any nuclear weapon dropped during the war.
When she returned to her place beside Dr. Armstrong, he stared at the display with squinted eyes.
3.1%
6.8%
14.2%
21.9%
“What have you done?” screamed her colleague. He darted past her and readjusted the conversion settings. From the corner of her eye, she could see his rapid movements, undoing her settings.
Cynthia crossed her arms and watched the display.
19.5%
11.4%
9.0%
5.1%
3.8%
Dr. Armstrong reappeared just in time to see the display at one-point-nine percent. “You increased the collision velocity by four-thousand percent. What were you thinking?”
On his tablet, she heard the waiting comm before their supervisor appeared in holograph. Patrick Yolin had operated the New York Center of Nuclear Research for two decades, and there had never been a major incident under his management.
“Good afternoon, Armstrong.”
“Afternoon, Dr. Yolin. We had a situation. Dr. Medina altered the collision velocity—”
Cynthia heard her tablet crash to the floor. She felt her hands wrap around Armstrong’s throat. She squeezed tight.
The second tablet fell. Dr. Yolin’s face disappeared. Armstrong gasped and clawed at her hands, desperate for breath.
She was far stronger than she remembered. Her fingers sank into his flesh and crushed his trachea in an instant. Blood failed to pump through his restricted carotid. His brain starved for blood.
Cynthia watched as the life left his eyes. Pinpricks of petechiae already showed across his cheeks. His body hung limp in her arms. When she released him, he slumped to the ground dead.
What had she done? It was impossible. She wasn’t capable of such a thing. She didn’t have the strength to kill a man with her bare hands. She didn’t have the stomach for it.
Cynthia picked up his tablet from the ground and righted it. “What just happened?” Dr. Yolin demanded.
“I—I think there’s been an accident,” she admitted. She stared at the dead man who lay only inches away. Already his skin started to grey.
“Should I send someone down to assist you?” Dr. Yolin asked.
Cynthia wanted to say ‘
yes’, but instead, she heard, “No, we’re fine here.” The words were in her own voice.
She looked down and saw her finger end the comm. The control room was quiet but for the tick of sensors and the constant buzz of machinery. She was alone with the control panel for the largest nuclear facility in the northern hemisphere.
SILAS
LRF CORRIDOR
SEPTEMBER 16, 2232
Silas led Dr. Perkins and Maggie to the FIC, the only place that housed enough clean clinic space and medical equipment to perform the risky procedure.
“Silas! Aida!” Vince shouted as he trotted down the corridor to catch up.
Dr. Perkins turned at the sound of his voice, but Silas encouraged her to go on without him. Maggie linked elbows and kept her moving.
Silas faced Vince alone. “How could you make me do that?” Vince asked, his features ruined by grief. “Don’t you think she already hates me enough?”
Silas squeezed Vince’s shoulder as he’d done countless times in their years together. “So she could see what you did to protect her, even when you hated it. She deserved to know the truth, to hear it from you.”
Vince rubbed his hands together, trying to hold onto his anger. But he couldn’t, and Silas knew it.
So Vince voiced his real concern. “You’re going to kill her. You can’t do this.”
“We have to. The bugs have taken a targeted interest in her. She’s survived more extractions than any person in existence. It has to be her.” Silas put his hands on his hips and prepared for a long conversation.
Instead, Vince merely asked, “Can I see her?”
“That’s up to her.” Silas could guess, but he wouldn’t deny Vince the opportunity to try.
With head hung low, Vince fell in step beside Silas.
When the two arrived at the FIC, a line of Scholars stood outside the door. Filmore had sent the ecomms to come, but Silas hadn’t anticipated so many so soon. They had to push past a few to get in the door.
Dr. Perkins lay face-down on one of the metal tables. Maggie stood over her and rubbed her back.
Without waiting, Vince crossed the small room and crouched down where Dr. Perkins could see him. “I know you don’t want me here, but I want you to know that my name was the only lie.”
Silas saw her intense stare, the way she soaked in his words. At least she didn’t send him out.
“Everything was real. Everything they said was true. This is dangerous, and you’re so brave—”
When Vince faltered, Dr. Perkins surprised them all by propping herself up on elbows and turning to face him. “If anything happens, look in the bottom drawer of my desk.”
Vince shook his head. “Nothing’s going to happen. Silas is the best there is. I love you, Aida. I wouldn’t let anyone do this if I didn’t trust that you would be safe.”
Silas smiled. Brave talk from someone who tried to stop him moments before.
Dr. Perkins lay back down on the table and watched as Vince left. On his way out, he stopped by Silas and said, “If you need anything, I’m right outside.”
“Actually, you can help. Got a flashlight?”
Vince nodded.
“Check the donors for signs of other bugs. You can at least eliminate the Echoes and Gleams.” He clapped Vince on the shoulder as he walked out to the first Scholar in line.
Cleared of Vince’s check, a young Scholar man walked in. His hair was short like all the new graduates from the Scholar Academy. He couldn’t have been there more than a year. With a voice of calm, Silas told him to lie on the table.
Maggie stepped forward without a moment’s delay. She checked him again for an Echo or Gleam, shining a light into his mouth and again into his eye. With a light on the end of long tool, Maggie looked into his ear. Then, she snatched the clamp off the table in a quick motion. She thrust the tool into his ear and, five seconds later, produced a Yield.
Silas stepped forward with a large glass jar and held it out. Maggie dropped the bug into the jar. It ran in a circle across the bottom several times, its long tail flipping about as its four legs scurried. She pulled the jar from his hands and held it in front of Dr. Perkins.
With a bug mere inches from her face, encased in glass, Dr. Perkins gasped. “I had one of those?” she asked, her mouth twisted with revulsion. Before she could get a good look, it shook then cracked and burst into dust. A fine, black powder was all that remained in the bottom of the jar.
“Yes, just one,” Maggie replied.
“Calv—Vincent got it out? Like you just did?”
Maggie nodded and set the jar to the side.
“You’re done. Send in the next,” Silas told the Scholar. He slid from the table and bolted without a word.
The next was a woman with fire-red hair and some of the lightest blue eyes Silas had ever seen. Where the man had been calm and obedient, the woman shook with nerves and had to be encouraged to the table. “What’s all this for?” she asked, looking between Maggie and Silas.
Then, she saw Dr. Perkins on the table. “What happened to her?” she asked, her voice shrill.
“Nothing happened. We’re just performing a test. Please lay—” Silas didn’t bother finishing. Maggie already had the gas canister depressed. The woman sank into Silas’s arms.
“You don’t know she’s got one,” he reminded Maggie as he dragged the woman to the table and laid her flat.
“Yes, I do. Look at her. What kind of a Scholar acts like that?” Maggie glared at him.
“Check her for the others, just in case.”
Within a minute, Maggie had ruled out the Echo, Gleam, and Yield.
Satisfied the woman had a Slight or nothing, Maggie said, “Flip her.”
Somehow, Silas played the role of assistant and let Maggie take the lead. He turned the woman onto her back.
“Can I borrow this?” she asked of the thin pillow where Dr. Perkins rested. With eyebrows furrowed, Dr. Perkins handed it over.
Maggie pulled a second pillow from the sleeping Scholar and folded them into a thick bundle. Then she shoved it under the woman’s neck.
Silas recognized the advantage. “That’s how you did it? You put the neck at an angle?”
“It widens the spaces between vertebrae,” she replied. Maggie climbed up over the woman and straddled her lower back.
“That’s very smart.” Silas put his hands on his hips. He didn’t know how to help her.
Maggie held the scalpel in one hand and the clamp in the other. “Can you hand me the spray?” she asked.
Silas reached over and depressed the antiseptic spray across the woman’s neck.
Maggie drew a line with the scalpel, then repeated the motion harder and faster. She was through the skin and muscle layers in thirty seconds.
He only saw her pause a moment before plunging the clamp into the woman’s neck. She twisted it violently and produced a sickening sound. Silas was sure the woman was dead. Maggie must have pinched the spinal column and severed it by now.
Instead, she pulled back out with a Slight at the tip of her clamp.
“Told you,” she gloated.
The wings of the Slight flapped in the air as it struggled to get free. A high, piercing sound filled the room as it squirmed.
“Aida, I need you to flip over. Now.” Maggie held the bug at arm’s length, pinched in the clamp, as she climbed off the Scholar woman.
Dr. Perkins kept her eyes on the tip of Maggie’s clamp as she rolled on the table. Maggie was still three feet away when the Slight went rigid and dissolved into ashes.
“Dammit!” Maggie fussed.
“Just have to be faster next time. Get this one closed up.” Silas pulled the cleaning device from the table and ran it along the length of the woman’s incision. It took three times longer than the full-size machine at CPI, but it closed the wound enough. Maggie wiped at the blood that ran down the sides of her neck and pooled on the table.
When they were ready, they woke her up and sent her on her
way. No one said what happened, and she declined to ask.
“That’s the thing you want to infect me with?” Dr. Perkins looked up at Maggie with fearful eyes.
“Want me to get him?” Maggie asked. She rested her hand on Dr. Perkins’s shoulder.
She nodded with all the composure of a recruit during their first interview.
A moment later, Maggie returned with Vince.
THEO
LRF CORRIDOR
SEPTEMBER 16, 2232
“Her name is Holtz?” Projected in mini from his wristlet, Theo skimmed the LRF directory looking for her residence quarters.
“Yeah. Dr. Audra Holtz. Planetary Colonies. PQ-609. You know where that’s at?” Dasia had to half-jog to keep pace with Theo’s longer legs.
“Planetary Colonies?”
“Yeah. She’s the only one left in the whole department. That’s why she made the short list.”
Theo directed her down the corridor toward the personal-quarters sector. She had worked with Sal. She could have his access code, though surely Filmore had already interviewed her.
“So, you and Mable huh?” Dasia asked from behind him.
Theo didn’t turn around. “She told you?”
“No, but you just did.”
“Shit, sorry. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to say anything. It’s—” Theo didn’t know how to describe his relationship with Mable.
“New?” Dasia filled in.
“Yeah. And a lot has happened. It’s been kind of busy and crazy lately. I’m glad you’re here for her. I know she’s missed you.” Theo turned down the corridor to the left as he followed the map displayed from his wristlet.
“I missed her, too. I think Osip’s tired of hearing about her, actually.” Dasia laughed.
“Here it is.” Theo stopped short at PQ-609 and knocked. They both fell quiet to listen, but there was nothing—not so much as a sound from Dr. Holtz’s apartment.
Theo pressed his hand to the scanner. Dr. Filmore said they would be granted access, but still the screen flashed red.
