Immune

by Richard Phillips

  Jennifer was the first to release her hold, her eyes finally taking in the drying blood smears that caked Mark and Heather, along with Heather’s towel-draped torso.

  “Jesus! What happened to you?”

  With Mark keeping a watchful eye on Don Espeñosa, Heather rapidly filled Jennifer in on the day’s events, watching as shock turned to anger in her friend’s gentle face.

  Jennifer stepped toward Don Espeñosa. “You did that to my family?”

  The don shrugged. “You know what I am.”

  Espeñosa stiffened as Jennifer’s eyes locked with his.

  “Jen? What’re you doing?” The concern in Heather’s voice caused Mark to step closer.

  “Jen?” Heather repeated, reaching out to touch her friend’s shoulder.

  When Jennifer turned toward her, Heather released the breath she’d been holding. “It’s okay. Just making sure he wasn’t going to try anything like that again.”

  “So what’s the plan?” Mark asked, also relaxing his stance. “We can’t stay here.”

  Heather shrugged, a movement that almost caused the towel to slip from her shoulders.

  “Actually, I think we are going to be staying here. We need to hear Jennifer’s story. But first, we need a shower and some fresh clothes.”

  “I have a great shower and lots of clothes that will fit you,” Jennifer said. “I even have a robe Mark can use.”

  “And then?” Mark continued.

  “And then,” said Heather, glancing toward Jennifer’s laptop. “I think we need to re-establish contact with Jack and Janet.”

  135

  Music thundered in Raul’s head, not that pussy stuff he’d been forced to endure in his former life either. This was pure Nickelback, Chad Kroeger screaming out his rage at the world. Why he hadn’t thought of piping music into this prison, home, royal chamber that was his section of the Rho ship, Raul couldn’t fathom. After all, he’d had Internet access for ages. He could scan all the satellite frequencies of television and radio, even decrypting the most classified communications.

  Maybe that was it. He’d been so down in the weeds scanning data, he’d overlooked the simplest of things to make his life better. Understandable considering how hard he’d been driving himself.

  He felt the door open before he saw it, just another of the mechanisms tied into his neural net, and he certainly didn’t need to see Dr. Stephenson to know who had entered his inner sanctum.

  “Good morning, Raul.”

  Letting the music fade from his mind, Raul waited, floating in the air just above the machine that had been the focus of his energies these last few weeks. Why Stephenson bothered to walk through the room was one of the mysteries that cloaked the scientist. After all, he’d shown he could override Raul’s manipulation of the stasis field whenever he desired. But instead of floating effortlessly, the man wove his way through the alien conduits and machinery until he reached the open central area where Raul waited.

  “Going to a party?” Raul asked. He’d never seen Stephenson wear a business suit in the lab, although he’d seen him in one on television. This was a navy blue three-piece, tangerine shirt, gold cufflinks, a paisley tie, and chocolate Italian shoes.

  Stephenson came to a stop before the machine. “The president’s arriving for a briefing in an hour.”

  “Impressive.”

  “That’s not what I came to talk about.”

  “Fine. Spit it out.”

  Dr. Stephenson’s eyes flashed briefly, giving Raul the pleasure of knowing he had managed to annoy the man.

  Stephenson returned his attention to the device, running his hand lovingly along the surface of the thick coils that snaked in and out of the thing, coils within which whirls of glowing energy flashed, growing in intensity and then fading out with no apparent rhythm to the pulses. In the dim grayness that filled the room, the strange luminance failed to seep beyond the coils that contained it, providing no spot of light on Dr. Stephenson’s hands, even when they touched a glow spot.

  “You’ve done well.”

  The unexpected compliment caught Raul by surprise, sending a warm glow of pride through his entire body. Why the hell did he even care what Stephenson thought? After all, he hated the man.

  “It’s not finished, yet.”

  “I know, but we’re very, very close now. What about the power?”

  Raul rubbed his hands together. As challenging as the repairs to the device had been, providing the huge increase in power that would be required to bring it online had proved the most daunting of his tasks.

  “Eighty-three percent.”

  “We need at least ninety-five.”

  “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.”

  “You need to pick up the pace.”

  “Why don’t you get your ass in here and help me then?”

  “I’m sure you can handle it. Besides, I have other pressing matters to attend to.”

  “Like the Bandelier Ship?”

  Stephenson raised an eyebrow. “Among other things.”

  Raul had been monitoring the news about the Enemy ship, the one they had all believed stone dead until it had unexpectedly come to life a few days ago.

  “So that’s why the president is visiting.”

  “Even I have to play tour guide sometimes.” The annoyance in the deputy director’s voice left little doubt what he thought about this interruption.

  “You said I was doing well,” Raul returned to the original subject. “You know I’m working around the clock. Why are you pushing me to up the pace?”

  “There’ve been some complications with the nanite distribution.”

  “You mean the remotely programmable version you’ve been peddling around the world?”

  Stephenson paused, as if considering what he would say. “You’ve been watching the news networks and spy satellite feeds. You know about our program at Henderson House.”

  Although the confirmation that Stephenson had been monitoring his activities annoyed him, he got the sense that something big was about to be revealed.

  “Not going according to plan, is it?”

  “Just a technical problem. But with the world so new to the challenges of complete health, it would be a bad time for anything about Henderson House to leak out.”

  Raul laughed. “I guess so. Lots of people are already upset about the total breakdown of birth control in the third world. Pill’s not working. Normal abortion methods failing. Little sperms have gotten hardy. All the world for a condom, eh?”

  Stephenson shrugged. “Which brings us back to Henderson House. We already had one leak, which we were lucky to plug.”

  “I don’t get it. What’s my work got to do with that?”

  “All programs have leaks. Especially the most sensitive.”

  A light dawned in Raul’s mind. “And you want to be able to instantly reach out and touch someone should that happen. By creating a gateway.”

  “I need you to stop surfing the Internet and focus every ounce of your attention on the task I assigned you.”

  “You know what I want.”

  “I’ve known for a long time now. You want the McFarland girl.”

  “Then you know why I’ve been searching the world’s data feeds.”

  “You just focus on getting the machine working. You do that and I’ll tell you where to go get her.”

  Raul was stunned. Was it possible that Stephenson could know where Heather was? He couldn’t really put it beyond the man. He’d surprised Raul before.

  “You’d let me bring her here?”

  “She’s a runaway known to be suffering from psychotic delusions. Nobody would even know what became of her.”

  Raul stared into the deputy director’s face. There was something else there, something Stephenson was hiding behind those cold eyes. Whatever it was, the scientist wouldn’t be making him this promise if he couldn’t deliver.

  Raul shifted his concentration and ten thousand tiny strands of
force plunged into control panels around the room, the massive neural network directing the simultaneous repair work ramping up to full capacity.

  Dr. Donald Stephenson grinned, then turned and strode from the room. His departure went entirely unnoticed.

  136

  Garfield Kromly strolled nonchalantly through the crowds on the vast open lawns of the Washington Mall, enjoying the first really nice Sunday morning in weeks. Pam would have loved it. He could almost feel her delicate little hand in his, her shoulder pressed against him as they stared out at the great spire of the Washington Monument.

  “Ah, my sweet little darling,” he muttered under his breath. “I miss you.”

  Someone jostled him, but when he looked to his left, he couldn’t tell who it might have been. All he knew was that the small brown paper-wrapped package he’d been holding in his left hand was gone.

  Despite his best efforts and those of the few people he trusted at CIA, Kromly had been unable to fully break the encryption on the data disk. But the one thing he had learned was enough to give him chills.

  The network of global positioning system satellites, more commonly known as GPS, had been compromised by a super-secret US government program, somehow connected to the Rho Project.

  That they were using GPS was oddly fitting. When global positioning data had first been made broadly available, the US government had partially corrupted the down-linked time data using a process known as dithering, part of what was called Selective Availability. The idea had been to provide the correct information only to classified subscribers, so they would have much more accurate location data.

  As was often the case with such schemes, civilian users immediately came up with ways to correct the data, allowing almost the same accuracy for their users as that available to the US military and intelligence communities. Thus, the huge sum of money aimed at Selective Availability was essentially a complete waste. Another hundred-million dollar military toilet seat.

  But now the GPS signal was being manipulated in a very subtle way, acting as a carrier signal for information transmitted worldwide. The data on the DVD disk containing this information had been extracted by the late Dr. Nancy Anatole from the personal laptop of Dr. Donald Stephenson. It was a disk she had hidden away with instructions that it be forwarded to a friend on the Senate Intelligence Committee should anything happen to her. And although the disk had eventually found its way into Kromly’s hands, he had not been able to unscramble enough of the information to discover the true purpose underlying the GPS embedding.

  As the soft breeze gently tousled his gray hair, Garfield returned his gaze to the Washington Monument and the small flock of birds settling into the grass near its base.

  Well, the pass had been made. He could only hope that the Ripper’s resources exceeded his own. The disk was Jack’s problem now.

  137

  “Prettiest pregnant lady I’ve ever seen.”

  The voice lifted Janet from her chair and whirled her toward the door. As fast as she moved, Jack was quicker, sweeping her up in an embrace that somehow managed to be both powerful and gentle, like being wrapped in warm velvet rebar. Then their lips met and parted, the gentle flick of his tongue barely touching her own, sending an electric thrill through her body that left her breathing ragged.

  As she pulled her head back, she laughed. “Careful. That’s how I got in this condition in the first place.”

  “Thought I’d taken care of that.”

  “Apparently, those nanites have been busy fixing what got snipped.”

  Jack stepped back, holding her out at arms length, his eyes scanning her body from toe to head.

  “So what do you think?” Janet asked, although a part of her feared the answer.

  “I like it.” Then Jack dropped to his knees, placed his ear right up against her belly, and tapped it twice with his finger. “Hey, you in there. What’s your name?”

  Janet laughed out loud. “I don’t think he’s going to talk back.”

  “You sure it’s a he?” Jack asked, still listening for a response.

  “Positive.”

  “Woman’s intuition?”

  “Tall Bear told me.”

  “And he would know?”

  “Some sort of Navajo spiritual thing. He says he got it from his grandmother.”

  “Hmm,” Jack said, rising to his feet and kissing her once again. “Well, I guess we can’t argue with that. Jack Junior then.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Jack Senior’s taken.”

  “From the way he’s been acting in there, I was thinking of an Indian name. Something like Kicking Donkey.”

  A broad grin spread across Jack’s face, bringing a twinkle to his eyes. Lord she’d missed him.

  “Looks like we better keep his mom and dad alive long enough to hash all this out.”

  “Gonna disappoint a lot of people.”

  “Can’t be helped.” Jack paused. “You know we’re going to have to get married for real now.”

  “Can’t we just keep living in sin?”

  “Nope. Can’t have little Kicking Donkey getting teased at school.”

  Janet grabbed his hand and led him out onto the porch, pulling him into the swinging loveseat. The warm rays of the afternoon sun felt nothing like November, but given this fleeting moment of comfort and happiness, she wasn’t about to argue with the weatherman.

  Jack’s face grew more serious. “What have you got for me that you couldn’t encrypt into a message?”

  Janet sighed. The warmth of their moment had passed.

  For the next forty-five minutes, she laid out the whole story as she knew it. How she’d finally pieced together the puzzle, how the whole time they’d been hunting their mysterious source in the Rho Project, it was right under their noses in the persons of Heather McFarland and Mark and Jennifer Smythe.

  When she finished, Jack leaned sideways in the loveseat, absently petting her stomach with his right hand.

  “So they’ve made no contact since they disappeared?”

  “None.”

  “And you think it has something to do with the second alien ship found in that canyon?”

  “I’ve run a number of correlations. There are too many coincidences. That’s not far from the cave where the Rag Man took Heather. You said that guy moved like no one on this planet. Mark showed incredible coordination, and we both suspected he was holding back from his true potential. Then the kids’ project won the national science contest. Somehow, they just happen to be connected to a whole set of unusual happenings. Given that they disappeared right after that ship was discovered, if there’s a better explanation, I’m listening.”

  “Not one I can think of. Whatever they stumbled upon has them running and hiding.”

  “Which is why they couldn’t keep providing the hacker link we were using. They’ve been on the move.”

  Jack paused, stroking his chin with his hand. “Just because they can’t keep that link up doesn’t mean they haven’t been checking in on us. Didn’t our source say to leave a message on your laptop if we needed contact?”

  Janet sat up. “I forgot all about that.”

  “I’ve got a disk full of data I need them to break for me.”

  “Got it on you?”

  Jack pulled the DVD from his jacket pocket, holding it out to her.

  Getting to her feet, Janet took it and headed for the laptop.

  “Then I guess we ought to put our message in the bottle.”

  138

  Don Espeñosa sat, tied to a chair next to Mark, his face an unreadable mask. They’d debated chaining him in the bathroom, but had decided it was better to keep him under Mark’s watchful eye, even if that meant letting the drug baron hear everything. It didn’t matter. Heather had seen Espeñosa’s future, and he no longer had any.

  Don Espeñosa knew he’d only continue living as long as they needed him and had already gone out of his way to demonstrate the extent to which he could
be useful. He’d placed a call to one of his cleanup crews, giving instructions to get rid of the human remains in the gym and to scrub it down so thoroughly no DNA samples remained. It was a risky thing, but far better than dealing with queries about the smell. This wasn’t exactly the first bloody cleanup to have occurred on this property.

  Jennifer wiped at her swollen eyes with the back of her hand, as if she could scrub away the memories that haunted her. For the last two and a half hours, the story, begun haltingly, had spilled from her lips, sweeping Heather into a maelstrom of emotion.

  Despite that she’d showered and changed into clean clothes, Heather felt sullied. A glance at Mark revealed a similar response. They could live with the illegal activities Jennifer had performed for the cartel. But this Eduardo person was something altogether different. Jennifer’s brief glimpse into his soul had been so horrifying it had left her at his mercy. Now he had both Jennifer’s headset and the Rag Man’s.

  Halfway through Jennifer’s description of the man, the visions that assaulted Heather left her hands shaking so badly she was forced to grip the table to steady herself. Eduardo had tried on the headsets. The thought of what he was now in the process of becoming filled her with a thick dread. When Eduardo found out that Jennifer had escaped, he would pay a visit to White Rock and their wonderful parents would die.

  “Dear God!”

  Jennifer only nodded, her voice finally having failed her.

  Heather turned toward Don Espeñosa. “Eduardo. Where was he going?”

  The drug lord shrugged. “He didn’t say.”

  Mark’s jaw tightened. “Bullshit! Just because we want you alive doesn’t mean I won’t hurt you.”

  Espeñosa stiffened. “El Chupacabra has many clients. Whoever called him had more pressing need of his services than I did.”

  “El Chupacabra?” Heather interrupted. “What is that?”

  “A story mothers tell to scare their children. It’s Eduardo Montenegro’s favorite nickname. Most people know him as the Colombian.”