The Lethal Agent (The Extraction Files Book 2)

by RS McCoy

  “See if you can get Filmore on comms,” Theo instructed. He knelt before the panel and felt around the edge, looking for the clip. His fingertip found the edge and popped the panel from the wall so that it hung by the multicolored wires.

  The comm notification buzzed behind him, so long it sounded like an echo in his head. Theo pulled at the wires to see where they went, and in what order, before pulling a black one and an orange one. He swapped their locations and held them in place long enough to see a green glow on the floor. A metallic latch clanged from somewhere in the wall as the door swung open.

  “What can I help you with, Ms. Daugherty?” Director Filmore asked.

  “Uh, never mind.” Dasia hung up on him and pushed into Dr. Holtz’s apartment.

  The room was identical to every other single quarters in the LRF. The bed was made, the floor was clear of clutter. Dr. Holtz’s desk was folded up against the wall. The only sign of life was the running water in the bathroom.

  Theo called, “Dr. Holtz?” into the bathroom, but no one answered. When he peeked around the door, he saw a pool of blood haloed around the late planetary colonies researcher. Her eyes were rolled back in her head, and her skin had the stark paleness of a cadaver.

  It was a look Theo recognized.

  “Dammit,” Dasia said under her breath. She knelt down and pressed two fingers to the carotid artery. “Think she had a bug?”

  “Had to be. Check her.”

  Dasia pulled a flashlight from her bag and shone it in the mouth, eye, and ear of the woman. She looked up at Theo and shook her head.

  “Come on. Help me get her up.” Theo pulled a towel from the rack and pressed it to the wound at the back of her head.

  “What? Where are we taking her?”

  “To FIC. If she’s got a Slight, then Mable can get it out.” Dr. Holtz was a small woman, no more than 130 pounds, but she was the definition of dead weight. Theo had no choice but to throw her over his shoulder like a kidnapping victim. Hanging upside down, blood poured out of the wound.

  It took a little finagling, but they finally worked it out. Theo carried the woman’s body down the corridor while Dasia walked behind with a towel pressed to the opening, both hoping the bug was still alive.

  MICHAEL

  LRF-AQ

  SEPTEMBER 16, 2232

  “You’re still leaving?” Michael asked, though deep in his heart, he had already known the answer.

  “I don’t have a reason to stay.” Abigail stood with arms crossed. She barely looked like herself. Her hair was loose and messed; her clothes were casual and comfortable. He wondered which was the real Abigail.

  “There’s plenty of work to be done. Thousands of lives we can save.” The list of attacked cities hovered over his desk. Every hour or two, another was added, sometimes more. Intermixed were the names of colonies and colony ships, including the one that had been sent to Perkins-196, and the one that was programmed to take its place. Now, a third ship sailed through space to the strange planet, though Michael had his doubts it would ever arrive.

  Dozens of cities. Dozens of colonies.

  They were only names, but each represented millions of people who were killed. Maybe tens of millions.

  “You don’t trust my judgement.”

  “In all fairness, you did lie to me. You lied to me about everything.”

  “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “Just as I didn’t have a choice in the Ares Colony.” Michael reached out and put a hand on her arm, the only bit of contact they’d had in days.

  Abigail looked at the ground, refusing to acknowledge him.

  “Was it all a cover?” he asked.

  “Not all of it.”

  “Your name is Abigail?” Michael felt like an idiot for even having to ask. He’d known her—or thought he had—for nearly a year. He’d known her professionally as well as intimately, and here he was, asking her name.

  “Everyone’s called me Abby since I was little.”

  “And you’re not a Scholar?”

  “I was a Craftsman. I worked in a genetics lab until I was fired. Silas picked me up, and I’ve been with CPI since.”

  “Anything else?”

  At last, she looked up at him. “I’m a brunette.”

  “I think I can handle that.” Michael smiled. At least, down in the depths of it, their relationship had been real. “I really would like you to stay.”

  “Because you need help?” she asked.

  “Well, yes. I’m afraid you’re too good. You did your job so well I became reliant. I depend on you.”

  Her eyes dropped and she turned away.

  “And because I want you here,” he told her. He had to. If he didn’t tell her now, he’d regret it forever. “I need you here with me. I need you, Abby.”

  She spun at the sound of her name, her real name. Michael saw the tears in her eyes from where he stood several feet away.

  “Are you going to make me beg?”

  Her resolve finally collapsed. She giggled and shook her head as she rushed him. He buried his face in a mound of messy blonde hair. Her arms wrapped around his neck and squeezed him tight.

  Michael was a successful Scholar. He held one of the most prestigious positions in his class. In the face of so much death, in the catastrophes that would mar his name for centuries to come, he could only think of the woman he now held in his arms. He wasn’t accustomed to the intensity of the pounding in his chest. He was supposed to be reasonable, measured, unemotional. He was supposed to be able to resist her all along.

  Logically, it was wrong in every way possible. But here, in the privacy of his office apartment with Abby hugged tight to his chest, Michael couldn’t bring himself to be guilty. He was only thrilled to have her stay, to have an opportunity to get to know her again.

  When Abby touched back to the floor, her smile faded as he eyes locked on something behind him. Michael turned and saw the latest name appear on his screen: New York. In parentheses, Total Loss.

  MABLE

  LRF-FIC

  SEPTEMBER 16, 2232

  Mable screamed as she threw the clamps across the room. Her hands flew to the body suit of the dead Scholar between her legs. She picked him up with great effort and slammed him into the table, as if that would wake him from death.

  Four.

  Four deaths in a row.

  They were getting smarter. They were figuring out their plan. The bugs were in this to destroy humanity, and they were succeeding in admirable fashion.

  Mable was on the losing end of the war.

  Arrenstein grabbed her shoulders and pulled her down. “Maggie, you need to calm down. I’ll do the next one, just go take a break.” He all but pushed her toward the door.

  “Let go of me,” she screamed at him. “People are dying. What am I supposed to do? Go take a nap? Fuck you.”

  Vince stepped between them. “I’ll take over for a while. Go sit with Aida.”

  “I’m not—”

  “Go. Sit. With. Aida.” He walked to the far side of the room and retrieved her clamp. He slid them into a jar of antiseptic before the two men pulled the body from the table and heaped it with the others by the door.

  Mable swallowed her angry frustrations and skulked over to Aida. She was the vision of cool and collected. Her hands lay clasped across her stomach, and her eyes were closed. She looked to be concentrating on her breathing, ignoring the deteriorating scene around her.

  Reminded of what she was about to go through, Mable felt a twang of guilt. She had no right to be upset. No one had asked to infect her with a lethal parasite.

  For every moment they wasted, thousands were dying. Another family would lose their Alex. Another worried mother lost their Kellan. Deep in the trenches of her own grief, Mable couldn’t stand to think of how many lives were destroyed because she was failing.

  Mable couldn’t help but feel responsible.

  Aida’s eyes flitted open as Mable settled at her side. “Still nothing
?”

  Mable stood between Aida and the growing pile of bodies by the door. She would have to figure out a better solution before Aida caught on to just how badly they were failing.

  “Everything’s fine. The bugs are pretty temperamental outside the body. We’re just not fast enough.” Mable adopted Arrenstein’s plastic smile and hoped it did the job.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” Aida replied.

  “So I’ve been told.”

  The next Scholar was a tall, slender man with a jaw that could cut ice. Vince stepped forward and said, “Open your mouth.”

  “Why?” the man asked in protest.

  Silas appeared and gassed him. The man collapsed into Vince’s arms and the two shuffled him to the table.

  Then Theo burst through the door, Dasia tight on his heels. “Get that one down,” he commanded as he shuffled in with a body over his shoulder.

  “What the hell, Kaufman?” Silas groaned.

  “This is Holtz,” Dasia explained.

  Mable lurched across the room and tugged at the man’s hip hard enough to get him half on the table and half on the floor. Vince took the weight of his shoulders and lowered him the rest of the way down.

  “She had a Slight?” Mable asked.

  “We don’t know. She was lying dead in her bathroom, but she doesn’t have the other three. Can you check her?” Theo asked as he heaved the woman onto the table.

  “Flip her.” Mable snatched the clamps from the antiseptic jar and settled into her straddled position over the woman’s back. “Can you hand me that scalpel?” She held her hand out.

  As soon as she felt the cool metal in her hand, Mable plunged it into the woman’s flesh. She had no intention of going lightly. The woman was already dead. Her only focus was the bug, the Slight that hid between two vertebrae.

  Mable peeled back a huge portion of skin and muscle, a four inch square that flapped back when she pulled on it. There, between the bones, sat the Slight. It was wound tight around the brainstem, its tail extending down the spinal cord.

  “Christ, Maggie,” Arrenstein said with a gasp.

  Mable ignored him and adjusted the clamp in her hand. “Pull her over here. I want her right next to me, on her back.”

  Vince pushed Aida’s table over so that the two hit with a loud metallic clank. From the corner of her eye, Mable could see Aida’s features change dramatically. Her coolness faded as she stared at Mable, her mouth half open with fear.

  But Mable didn’t have time to worry about that.

  As she’d done a dozen times already, Mable plunged the clamp between the vertebrae and pulled the Slight free. This time, with Aida close and with no concern over the host, Mable leaned over and set the bug on Aida’s cheek.

  After a brief moment of screech, it scurried into her nose and disappeared.

  DASIA

  LRF-FIC

  SEPTEMBER 16, 2232

  Vince, Theo, and Dr. Arrenstein hovered over Dr. Perkins like she was a shiny new toy.

  “Aida, can you hear me?” Vince asked, his voice shrill.

  “Is she awake?” Theo asked the other two.

  “Did you see that? It went in the nose? How the hell did you know it would do that?” Dr. Arrenstein spun and gaped at Mable as she climbed off the body of Dr. Holtz.

  “It’s the only thing that made sense. Direct access to the brain,” she replied as her feet hit the floor. Dark circles sat beneath her eyes. She was wearing down.

  “Aida,” Vince continued. “This was a terrible idea. How could you do this?” he asked Dr. Arrenstein.

  “Aida?” Theo asked as the others bickered.

  Dasia stepped forward and pushed them all back. This was her idea, her plan. If Aida was going to die of infection, then it was because Dasia had suggested it in the first place. “Geez guys, give her some air.” Vince took the most convincing, a firm hand on his chest, but he, too, gave in.

  Dasia took a deep breath and tried to quiet her pulse. She needed to think. She didn’t want to consider what it would mean if Aida never woke up. It would be all her fault.

  She had to figure it out.

  Aida lay on the table like she was asleep. She hadn’t made a sound, not when she saw the bug, not when Mable put it on her cheek. Not even when it crawled up her nose like a snake.

  She had just gone limp.

  Dasia slid her hand in Aida’s and squeezed lightly. Like she had done nothing more than doze off, Aida’s eyes fluttered open. “What’s going on?” she asked as she looked from Vince to Theo to Dr. Arrenstein.

  “We need you to try to input a code to terminate the colony.” Dasia produced her tablet, already cued to the screen thanks to Director Filmore.

  “I don’t know the code” She closed her eyes again and covered her face with a shaking hand.

  “I know you don’t. Just try. Any numbers that come to mind.”

  “I don’t know it!” she insisted.

  “Prove it. Enter some numbers. Just twelve digits. Go on. Show us.” Dasia held the tablet closer to her face and waited.

  Aida snatched it. She pushed to sitting and fumed several angry hot breaths. She stabbed at the tablet with her finger like a knife, hitting the virtual number pad so hard she could have broken the screen.

  “There,” she said as she shoved it back at Dasia.

  Dasia looked at the screen and hit the ‘submit’ button, as Aida had failed to do so already. She held her breath. Her hands shook despite how she tried to keep them steady.

  A long, eternal fifteen seconds passed. The icon on the screen spun and spun and spun, as if it would never do anything else. Dasia could feel the world ending. She could sense the failure only inches away.

  Then the spinning stopped.

  She turned the screen back toward Aida and showed her the displayed message.

  “It seems you were able to figure it out.” Dasia smiled.

  “What? How? I don’t—”

  Mable and Dr. Arrenstein were on her with a can of gas before she could even process it. Like a flash mob, they tackled her to table and flipped her. Mable climbed over her and began the delicate process of Slight removal.

  Even Theo and Vince knew well enough to step back and let her work.

  She was a vision. Her cuts were controlled, her tools moving with precision. Dasia was in awe of her.

  In less than two minutes, Mable had isolated the bug. It screamed and bucked against the clamps before she threw both against the wall. The bug fizzled into a cloud of dust as it struck.

  Mable spent another five minutes closing the incision and getting her cleaned up, but by the end, Aida looked no worse for the wear. She was asleep, but there were no visible signs of her infection.

  “And now we wait,” Mable said matter-of-factly as she climbed down.

  Dasia watched as Theo grabbed Mable’s hand and squeezed. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear before she kissed his cheek and let him in to see his sister.

  Mable wove through the crowd of nervous men and made her way to Dasia. Her hair was splayed around her face from her hours of intense work.

  “You were great,” Dasia mused as she wrapped an arm across Mable’s shoulders.

  “But you’re the brains of the operation.” Mable tilted her head to rest on Dasia’s arm.

  Dasia smiled and kissed her head. “You should get some rest.”

  Theo walked over a few minutes later and offered to take her home. Mable looked at Dasia with sad eyes, but Dasia only said, “Go on. I’ll catch up later. I just want to make sure she wakes up.”

  “You’ll let us know?” Theo asked.

  Dasia nodded and watched them leave. Theo’s hand was on the small of her back. They moved together, in fluid motion.

  Dasia smiled.

  At the table, Vince sat beside Aida’s sleeping figure, his face buried in his hands. “How long did it take her to wake up last time?” she asked with a hand on his shoulder.

  Vince popped up with a jerkin
g motion. “Oh, uh, two or three hours.”

  “Do you want me to stay with her for a while?”

  “No, thanks. I’m not going anywhere.” He offered her a pained smile and returned to his worry.

  When the room filled with quiet, Dr. Arrenstein leaned down and said, “I’m proud of you, kid.”

  “It wasn’t just me. It was all of us.” Dasia couldn’t have done it without Mable or Osip or even Theo.

  “Still, you did good.” Dr. Arrenstein pulled back a moment later and commed Director Filmore. “It worked. She’s in recovery now. The code was accepted. Hopefully that’ll put an end to the attacks.”

  “Thank you, Dr. Arrenstein. I was about to comm you, actually. New York was just attacked. Some sort of nuclear explosion related to the hadron collider. They’re calling it a total loss. I’m incredibly sorry.”

  Dasia heard the words as if they were shouted down a tunnel.

  New York.

  Nuclear explosion.

  Total loss.

  Like a bullet right through her heart. It was a sad, patched together thing, hardly worthy of the name, but all the same, her heart was destroyed while it beat in her chest.

  Not again.

  Dr. Arrenstein spun, his eyes wide. “Dasia, wait!”

  She didn’t hear him. She couldn’t hear anymore. Dasia ran. She bolted from the clinic and ran down the sterile corridors. Her heart pumped and her feet pounded. Angry, unfair tears trailed down her cheeks. Osip and Knox and even Jane. All gone. A nuclear explosion. A total loss.

  THEO

  LRF-PQ-241

  SEPTEMBER 16, 2232

  Alone in their apartment, Theo lifted Mable from the floor and spun her around. “I can’t believe you did it. You actually did it!”

  Mable choked out a laugh and smacked his shoulders until he put her back down. “She’s not awake yet. Don’t get carried away.”

  “But she woke up last time. She woke up every time. And they have no reason to kill her now. She terminated the colony. No one will go to 196. It’s over.” Relief flooded through him.