Technosis: The Kensington Virus

by Morgan Bell

  A tall man in a blue operating theater suit, with an ID clipped to his chest and insignia on his shoulders, approached the table. “Dr. Baxter. I’m Dr. Gottfried. Can you understand what I’m saying?”

  Jamie began to speak, but felt his throat thick and sore.

  “Just nod your head if you understand me,” Dr. Gottfried said.

  Jamie nodded his head.

  “Very good. You’ve been under our care for the last 36 hours. When you get up you will find yourself feeling a little…different. Please avoid sudden movements,” Dr. Gottfried advised.

  Two med techs appeared at either side of the table and the table started to tilt forward. Jamie felt his body start to take the weight and was surprised to find he wasn’t sick or dizzy. Extended periods of immobility, especially medically induced immobility, usually resulted in nausea and vertigo when the body was first returned to an upright position. Instead his body seemed to welcome the change of position. The med techs released his straps and Jamie felt the weight of his own body settle into his legs. His legs were, when he looked down, not the atrophied limbs he remembered from before. They were thick and muscular like they’d been when he was studying to be a physician. He also felt muscles in his abdomen that he’d never felt before.

  “It was not a full reset,” Dr. Gottfried explained. “We were given very little time and told not to alter your physiological functions… fundamentally. So we were not able to do a telomere reset, nor would they let us clear the lipofucian, or enhance your glial cells. We did promote a little phagocytosis and made a few tweaks. But mostly it was steroids, metabolic accelerators and old fashioned Russian muscle units.”

  Jamie reached along the length of his torso and felt, for the first time in two decades, his ribs, with strong, lean muscles that he’d never experienced before. Then he thought about the steroids and looked down.

  “No worries there,” Dr. Gottfried observed. “They’ve not shrunken to the size of a peanut. We’ve managed the antagonistic aspect of the protocol so that your normal hormonal level will be maintained at a slightly younger stage. All to do with the DHEA and the subordinate hormones. Of course you understand all of this.”

  “Not entirely,” Jamie said, walking a few paces and then stopping to do a single legged squat. “Why did they do this?”

  “They limited us because of your natural gift or ‘resistance’; as to why they had you go through this, I can only say that you are twelve hours from in-field deployment,” Dr. Gottfried informed him. “And when I said no sudden movement, I meant it. You need to learn your new body. If you push it too hard without stretching you may injure it and that would not be acceptable. A significant investment has been made in you.”

  “Sir?” Said a man in a uniform, stopping just inside the operating room door.

  “Sergeant Rosen, I would like you to meet Dr. Jamie Baxter. The general has attached him to your group. He’s just completed his training and will be working with you on your next few missions,” Dr. Gottfried said.

  “Yes, sir.” The sergeant saluted and Jamie was placed in a robe.

  ∞

  Jamie was standing in a cinderblock locker room putting on a uniform with Sergeant Rosen at his side. “What?” Jamie asked.

  “I’ve got two rules,” Rosen said. “They are the only two rules. If you get these down we will get along fine.”

  “Okay,” Jamie agreed. “What are the two rules?”

  “Rule number one, don’t get me killed,” Rosen began.

  “And rule number two?” Jamie asked.

  “Never forget rule number one,” Rosen said.

  “Fine, I won’t,” Jamie agreed.

  “Have you been out among the KV?”

  “Besides in the health campus psych unit or when a general stuck me in a room with 12 of them and made me wear a pair of net specs?” Jamie asked.

  Rosen looked at him. “I thought that was some sort of macho bullshit from command.”

  Jamie shook his head. “Sink or swim.”

  “It explains the overhaul.”

  “Overhaul?” Jamie asked.

  “That ‘new’ you. They don’t do that for everyone.”

  Jamie looked at his hands, which were thick and muscled. “They don’t?”

  “Nope. The rest of us have to get that old school. Boot camp, quarter-decking and all of the other fun, fun times that make Cyber Ops what it is today,” Rosen grumbled.

  “You don’t sound…happy.”

  “Me? I’m happy as a clam…who is expecting a future involving drawn butter,” Abe Rosen said. “When all of this was systems hacks, behind the line operations and hanging upside down in hangers for hours on end, I was having a great time. Now, I’ve got to take you out into a hotspot and clear it and bring you back alive.”

  “Not fun?” Jamie ventured.

  “Look, I don’t know you from Adam and you may be a really great guy. But I’ve got make sure you know rule number one.”

  “Don’t get Sergeant Rosen killed,” Jamie said.

  Rosen smiled. “There might be hope for you yet.”

  CHAPTER 5

  KV CONTAINMENT DATE CLASSIFED

  “Mom hasn’t come out since you left this morning,” Jane Kroger said to her father when he got home that afternoon.

  Mitch Kroger set down his case and closed his eyes. “Do you know if she’s showered yet?” he asked.

  “I told you, she hasn’t come out all morning. I think she decided to sleep the day away again,” his teenage daughter retorted.

  “I’m going to get her ready for her appointment. Please have yourself ready in ten minutes so that we can go,” Mitch ordered, and went to his bedroom door.

  The room was dark, as dark as it had been when he left it. In the darkness he saw the faint green glow of a panel that his wife Luisa was using. Her eyes were staring at it intently and her fingers danced over its surface quickly.

  “You have an appointment at the healthcare campus. Do you remember?” he asked, sitting at the edge of the bed.

  “Of course I remember,” she said, still working on the panel.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m letting several people know just how stupid and insignificant they are.”

  “Do they work for a living?” he asked.

  His wife didn’t look up. “They are idiots and someone needs to make them aware of that.”

  Mitch tried to reach out for the panel but his wife drew it away. “If you don’t go to your appointment they will send over a social data tech to do an in house evaluation. Which could result in –“ He didn’t get to finish the sentence as she was out of bed and off to the bathroom.

  Why the threat of a social interview bothered her he couldn’t understand. Appeal to her vanity, her pride, her malice or her greed and you couldn’t get a response from her anymore. Mention a home visit and you would think you had set her on fire. Mitch picked up her panel and was about to turn it off when he noticed a message. He read it. At first it appeared to be a nonsense message from someone named Chris. As he continued to read it he found his neck becoming tight, his temples were throbbing and his heart was racing. He tried to close his eyes and drop the panel. He couldn’t. His eyes were burning, his fingers clenched tightly, and his teeth locked. He could feel his whole head shake as his teeth threatened to break. Then there was the red, the red behind the eyes, the red veil that covered his brain. Finally there was silence and Mitch Kroger died in his bedroom waiting for his wife to get changed for her psychiatric appointment for rage issues. Fifteen minutes later his daughter Jane knocked on the bedroom door. “I’ve been waiting forever,” she complained.

  “We will be out in a few minutes,” Mitch assured her, adjusting his shirt collar and sending out a message to his co-workers.

  “We will be late,” Jane moaned.

  “Coming out now,” he said, not moving from the bed.

  Luisa came out of the bathroom to find Mitch on the panel. “What are you doing?
” she demanded.

  “Telling Sam and Roger that they are assholes,” Mitch replied, not looking up.

  “Oh,” Louisa said, and put on her shoes.

  “Mom, Dad, don’t make me start counting,” Jane warned.

  “You can drive,” Mitch told her.

  “But I don’t get my permit until next -“

  “You can drive,” Mitch snapped, and got up from the bed.

  ∞

  The transport vehicle took them out from the base to a healthcare campus outside Silver Springs, Maryland. They arrived at what looked like a typical day in corporate healthcare. Transports parked, people queued up in lines awaiting a chit to enter the wing of the campus their care was scheduled in for that afternoon. Disagreeable clerks were reviewing files and complaining to union stewards about working conditions and medics were looking suicidal as they returned to the scene of the previous day’s healthcare crimes.

  “We’ve got KV activity in the psych ward. We are here on a containment basis,” Rosen explained as the team suited up outside the transport.

  The other nine members of the team had already put on their goggles, set personal tech in the transport safe and were prepared for deployment. The tenth member, Jamie, was struggling to get his goggles on.

  “Baxter, are you having a problem?” Rosen asked him.

  “Yes, sergeant,” Jamie admitted, as the strap to his goggles threatened to split his face in half.

  “It’s like this,” Rosen said, removing the glasses from Baxter.

  He positioned them on the bridge of Baxter’s nose then pulled the strap back across Jamie’s head.

  “Thanks sergeant.”

  A few of the other members of the team snickered.

  “What is rule number one?” Rosen asked.

  “Don’t get Sergeant Rosen killed,” the team chanted in unison.

  “Correct.”

  “We will enter together, proceed through the processing center and down to the psych ward. There we split into two teams. Team red will be taking identification and extraction with Baxter bird dogging for us. Team blue will do mop up. Psych ward is second floor, two exit points, one stairwell and one elevator. Remember the rules for KVs,” Rosen said.

  “No Tech, No Talk and No One Gets Out Alive,” the nine members of the team responded.

  “All right, let’s move out.”

  “Sergeant, I don’t know how to bird dog,” Jamie complained.

  “You’ve got your goggles. Check the thermals. If they are lower than they should be they are either really sick or really dead. If they are either, and they are still talking, they’ve got the virus.”

  ∞

  Jane sat in the car shaking. Fourteen years and seven months on the planet had not prepared her for this. This was the day her parents had truly lost it. Her father hadn’t said a thing to her the entire drive over. He hadn’t checked the settings, the guidance systems, nothing. He’d sat quietly in the passenger seat as she had sweated her ass off driving in the late afternoon traffic north of Baltimore. All he did was send messages on the panel. He didn’t see the near misses, the over corrections she made when a federal transport came alongside them. Not a word. Then they got out of the car and left her there.

  Once she managed to prize her fingers from the steering wheel she promised herself that she would go into the building and tell both of her parents to go to hell. That was when she saw the eleven uniformed men get out of the federal transport vehicle on the other side of the parking lot.

  ∞

  Jamie looked at the members of the team around him. Where they showed heat signatures they were a bright red. As they made their way into the health campus he saw the people queued up; they were red to bright red. The clerks and the union steward were also red. Rose pulled off his goggles and flashed a badge at a security officer, who scanned it. Then he gave Rosen an all clear and the team moved into the corridor.

  The eleven of them took the elevator to the second floor and Rosen signaled for them to split into their respective teams. Blue team stationed members at the stairwell and the elevators and put four others forward near the entrance of the psych ward. Rosen walked up to the receptionist and flashed his badge. She reached down for a scanner.

  “It will be easy once you’ve gotten the first one under your -” Rosen was saying to Jamie.

  Jamie had buried his machete in the receptionist’s face and knocked the phone away before Rosen realized what was happening. Jamie crushed the phone beneath his boot.

  “What was that?” Rosen asked.

  “Rule number one, don’t get Sergeant Rosen killed,” Jamie said.

  “How did you…”

  “You had your goggles off. She was blue and getting colder. She was reaching for her panel.”

  Rosen pulled his goggles back on and saw the still moving receptionist was blue and cooling. Jamie removed the head and hands, and the form stopped moving.

  “Alright,” Rosen said. “Definitely a hotspot. Assume the worst; proceed with extreme prejudice.”

  The team moved into the psych ward where over forty people were complaining loudly, texting, messaging and posting on their social media. Not a single one of them had a heat signature anywhere near normal. By the time the team had cleared reception Rosen’s shoulder was sore from hacking. Jamie on the other hand was just warming up. He entered the exam rooms without backup – a break with protocol – and cleared them himself.

  “All three doctors were dead,” Jamie informed team red.

  “We’ve got forty three KV out here.” Rosen informed him.

  “Only had two try to get out to the stairwell,” team blue leader reported.

  “Baxter! What are you doing?” Rosen asked, seeing Jamie duck down behind a counter.

  “Bird dogging, sarge!’ Jamie replied.

  Jamie crawled along the floor of the workstation until he came to where the med tech’s chair was pushed out. Huddled up in a cubby he found the med tech, on his phone.

  “Hello,” Jamie said.

  The med tech didn’t look up and instead growled, “Fuck off, I’m on break.”

  “No one appreciates how hard you work,” Jamie commiserated.

  “No fucking gratitude. Fucking doctors and nurses acting all high and mighty. But we showed them. Got ourselves a union, no more step and fetch for that lot,” the med tech grumbled.

  Jamie looked at the heat signature; it was red, fading to blue. “Close enough,” he muttered, and dispatched the med tech.

  “Found one under the station counter,” Jamie called out, standing up.

  “Sarge, we’ve got trouble,” blue team leader responded. “Admin incoming.”

  A man in a silver suit, blue shirt and red tie marched across the lobby of the psych ward officiously. “You, over there,” he pointed to Rosen. “What is going on here?”

  “We are here on -” Rosen began, taking off his goggles.

  “This is my healthcare campus and my responsibility!” the man cut him off.

  “Yes and -”

  “Do you know who I am?” the man squealed. “Do you know how many facilities I’ve run to get to where I am today? You and your goons come into my healthcare campus and take it over! Well I’m Mr. Tracy and this is going to -”

  The machete flew across the room and buried itself in Mr. Tracy’s head. Mr. Tracy fell to the floor, still twitching and complaining loudly about who he was and how hard he’d worked to get there.

  “Baxter, how did you pick that up? His heat signature?” Rosen asked in awe.

  Jamie moved his goggles into place and saw that Mr. Tracy was a dark blue fading to black on the heat signature spectrum. “There’s that too,” Jamie said, and shrugged.

  CHAPTER 6

  KV OUTBREAK 3RD WORLD: PARAMUS, NJ

  Paramus, New Jersey, even on the nicest day, is not a place a soldier wants to be deployed. This wasn’t a nice day; snow had blanketed the east coast in the worst weather in forty years. Businesses, schoo
ls and roads were closed. But a handful of hardcore shoppers were at the mall when the KV strike team arrived.

  ∞

  “Hey, little man,” the creepy guy who was standing in the living room in his boxers addressed Sam.

  Sam ignored him. He’d gotten sick of trying to keep up with his mother’s boyfriends and this moron was just the latest clueless idiot to come home with his mom. Sam, at age eight, knew that there would be a fight, sooner rather than later, and his mother would be telling him what a horrible asshole the latest boyfriend was and how she’d never let this happen again. Sam had decided it was easier to tune out everything and just play his games.

  “You know where your mom’s purse is?” the creepy guy asked.

  Sam could have lied, could have ignored the idiot, but he’d learned it was better to be neutral and slightly helpful, even if it meant they got robbed. People didn’t hit you if you made it easy for them to rob you, well, they didn’t hit as hard. “On the corner table next to the front door.”

  “Thanks, little man,” the creepy guy smirked and went to the front of the apartment.

  He didn’t make much in the way of pretense about what he was doing. He went through the purse and took out all of Sam’s mother’s state and federal benefit cards. He also took her panel that all her payment services were linked to. While he was looking at the panel a message flashed on it. The creepy guy stopped and read it. His eyes narrowed and he felt his brain begin to burn with rage and then pain. He could hear the sound of his own blood swirling in his ears. He felt himself wanting to scream and gnash his teeth. But he said nothing. He just walked, read and went back into the bedroom where he had left Sam’s mom.