Three days later, just as I was sitting over a plate of rice and vegetables after hardly eating all day, I got a call from Annie.
“Michael, something’s wrong.”
“What? What is it?” I almost choked on my food.
“I don’t know. I’m having some kind of a reaction to the new cells.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at the clinic.”
I stood up and left my plate where it was, heading for the lab to find Justin.
“Okay, listen,” I said as I ran. “Send me all the test results once you’ve got them. I’ll go over them and we’ll see what’s wrong.”
“Okay.”
“Good. Just hold on. You’re going to be fine.”
Justin was in the lab, where I knew he’d be, working with a number of other people. I was in such a panic it was hard to focus. My heart rate, according to my com, was over a hundred.
“Annie’s having a negative reaction to the bio-vectors,” I whispered to Justin.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Come with me.”
We went into my office and accessed the results that Annie had just sent me. Thankfully she’d been at the clinic where they had an AutoAnalyzer.
“It looks like the engineered T-cells are killing too many cells too rapidly,” I said. “She’s having a shock response.”
“How is that possible? Our trials with the macaques were perfect.”
“I have no idea, but we have to stop it.”
“We should give it another day. It might just be a period of adjustment.”
“My wife could die.” I knew that Justin was even more desperate for this to work than I was.
“If we don’t get this to work, Penny is going to die.” Justin stood there and shook his head.
I held onto him for a few moments, but then I needed to call Annie. Justin slumped down into the chair.
On the third ring, Annie answered and I could hear the panic but also the exhaustion in her voice.
“What should I do, Michael?”
“You’re going to have to disable the new genes as we discussed.”
“So that’s it, then? It’s not going to work?”
“No.” I was frightened but angry too. Angry at myself. Angry at life itself for allowing this to happen. Then I realized how irrational that was and my mind started working away on other possible solutions, my heart racing and my chest tight as I wondered what to do next. This couldn’t be the end of it. There was no way. Maybe if we could germline modify some children as we were trying to do before the military bought us out then we could use them to culture natural killer cells and also clone out genes for antibodies which would recognize HIV-4 more quickly. But that was going to take years.
“What are we going to do now, then?” Annie said.
“I don’t know.”
“I’d better go. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.”
“Is there anyone there with you?”
“Yes. Simone and Derek are here.”
“Okay, let me know as soon as anything changes.”
“I will. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
Twenty minutes later, the longest twenty minutes of my life, Annie called me back and told me they had administered the failsafe inducer. It would be hours before we knew what the outcome would be. I wanted to be there with her, but by the time I got there it would all be over: for better or for worse.
I went back to my room, and Annie and I spent the next few hours talking to one another. Neither wanted to hang up, in case it was the last conversation we had. I felt as if by staying on the line with her I was somehow keeping her alive.
Around 3am, she told me that Derek had come in to run some more tests on her. Half an hour later she called again and told me it appeared they’d gotten to her in time. The chemical trigger had shut down the new genes, and her immune system was starting to function normally again.
The only problem was: normal wasn’t enough to cure her.
The next day I watched a report on the Indonesian situation. Indonesian troops were moving into the north of Australia. The military was there trying to stop more boats from landing, but there were too many of them and the area was too large.
Would the Indonesians really go to the extent of releasing the virus? It would be the end of civilization as we knew it. The start of a whole new era of total mistrust between countries and territories. It was almost inevitable, though. There simply wasn’t enough food left to feed everybody. People were going to die. Lots of people. It was only a matter of who.
One night, around 3am, I heard a soft knock on my door and got up quickly to open it. Justin was standing there with his nose red and his eyes bloodshot.
“What’s wrong?”
“Penny died,” he said.
I put my arms around him and pulled him to me while he cried. Then I invited him in and he spent the night telling me all about their childhood together, how she’d always been the strong one and had stood up for him in school. They hadn’t seen each other much in the last few years, as he had been so busy trying to find a cure for her.
The following day Justin left for the city to be with his family. I told him to take as long as he wanted, but he told me he’d be back by the end of the week. Penny was the only member of his family he really loved.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE NEXT MORNING, I switched the audio recorder on my com on, in case I ever needed a recording of this, and stormed in to General Savage’s office.
“That virus was ours, wasn’t it?” I said to him.
Savage looked at me out of deep blue eyes, unwavering, and said nothing.
“Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Close the door, Michael. Sit down.”
I stood there for a minute, hesitating, and then I realized I had no choice.
“Michael, I’m going to get right to the point.” Savage folded his hands in front of him. “Things are bad out there. Way worse than they tell you. And it’s going to get worse. Much worse. No holds barred. Whoever wins this one is going to do whatever the hell they like to the people living in the countries they conquer. Releasing that virus was our only option.”
“So it was ours, then?”
“Yes.”
“Why weren’t we informed?”
“It was classified information, Michael, and if any part of this conversation finds its way out of this room then you’re going to be arrested, do you understand me?”
I nodded, wondering if there was any way he could detect my recorder.
“The Indonesians are better armed than us, Michael, and there are a hell of a lot more of them. If this had gone on any longer they would have taken over the whole God damn country. Is that what you want? Indonesia taking over our country?”
“No, obviously not.” I wondered if any of what he was saying was true.
“Good. Now, while you’re here, I might as well share a little bit more classified information with you. Part of the reason we tested the virus out in Darwin was because we needed to know how well it would work and how well your vaccine worked.”
My chest ached. I couldn’t believe that I had been a part of what had happened. How many innocent civilians had been killed?
“And the good news,” Savage continued, “is that on both fronts we were fairly successful.”
“How many civilians were killed?” I said, not really wanting to know the answer but needing to anyway.
“None. Most of them were evacuated before Indonesia even attacked, and the rest got out shortly afterwards. Which is why it was the perfect test site. Combined with the fact that it’s so remote, and that the virus works so quickly, means — touch wood — that it hasn’t escaped.”
I looked down at the floor. I realized now I couldn’t trust a word he was saying, but what choice did I have? Obviously the media was being far more controlled than I had ever believed possible. There were no doubt a few dar
k-net forums that were still telling the truth, but even they would be shut down faster than new ones could pop up again. It wasn’t easy staying alive these days — it was in very few people’s moral fibre to make it even harder for themselves.
“Are you okay, Michael? Because this is a war here, son, and in war people die. Lots of people. There’s not much we can do about that.”
“Yes,” I said, wondering what would happen if I said I wasn’t. No doubt some high security prison awaited me where I’d never see the light of day.
“Good. Because we need to move quickly onto phase two.”
“Phase two?” I looked up at him, dizzy and nauseous, wondering if I would faint or throw up, but trying to keep my composure. People like Savage were usually paranoid. If I showed too much disgust at what was happening he’d find a replacement for me.
“Phase two involves dealing with this rebel situation. Your vaccine worked well, but not well enough. We need to make it work perfectly.”
“What do you mean, deal with the rebel situation?”
“We’re going to do the same thing to those bastards that we did to the Indonesians. They’re about to launch a full-scale attack on our city.”
“There’ll be contamination. It’ll get into the regulated zone. And what about those living in the de-reg zone who aren’t working for the rebels?”
“Have you been out there lately, Michael? Most of them are dying of starvation anyway. Pretty soon they all will be. There’s just not enough food left to feed us all.”
“What about the regulated zone?”
“That’s why we need to improve your vaccination. Initial statistics show that there was a ninety-five percent survival rate amongst those vaccinated, even better than your lab tests here. We need to get that up to a hundred.”
“Have you ever thought of creating a virus that doesn’t actually kill people?” I needed to stall him, to get as much information out of him as I could. Was there any way I could stop this?
“You mean incapacitates them in some way?” Savage looked confused.
“Something like that. Not exactly incapacitates — just makes them unwilling to continue fighting.” I was thinking about how my cooperation research findings could be applied to warfare.
Savage looked taken aback, and he scrunched his thick eyelashes down at me and stared out of cold blue eyes. “I’m not quite sure I get your drift.”
“Imagine something like this: a virus that makes anyone who has been infected with it so friendly and empathetic that they have zero inclination to kill people.”
“This is war, Michael. People get killed.”
“They wouldn’t have to, though. They could just be rendered incapable of warfare. To the point where they’d lay down their weapons in peace. Imagine a whole lot of hippies. We could give them the viral equivalent of LSD.”
“Are you sure you haven’t been taking any LSD?”
“Before the military contract with Geneus we were working on a process which could do this.”
“And how long would these effects last?”
“They could be made to last forever.”
Savage looked like he’d just eaten something disagreeable. “I’m afraid that’s not really what we’re after here, Michael. We’re after something which kills people. Puts them out of action. Permanently. These are not nice people we’re talking about. These are the enemy.”
“It’s not just the enemy, though, is it? Many of them are civilians. Do we really need to kill them all?”
“It’s the most efficient way to achieve our goals. What the hell are we going to do with thousands of happy hippies running around? We can’t lock them all up. We’d have to feed them, house them, clothe them… We can’t even manage that with our own population. It would be a total disaster. I’m sorry, Michael, but that’s just not what we’re after here. Too inefficient. What if they come up with a way to reverse its effects? We need to win this war and we need to win it quickly.”
I didn’t know how to respond. There was no way I could tell him I wouldn’t be involved, he’d already made that clear.
There must be ten million people out there at least. We couldn’t kill off ten million people, whatever the situation. I thought about Sam and his family, and the other people I’d gotten to know in the de-reg zone. Good people. Humble people. People who didn’t deserve to be wiped out like a rabbit population.
That night I went back to my room where Annie, who had just arrived at the base, was waiting for me.
Once I finished telling her everything, she just sat there and shook her head. Then she looked up at me with tears in her eyes.
“What are we going to do, Michael?”
“I have no idea.” The weight of the situation was so huge that I was having trouble comprehending it. How could I have been involved in something like this?
I disgusted myself. My desire to save Annie and Justin’s sister and others with their disease, my arrogance that I could actually do something to help, my gullibility in believing what the military had told us — that we needed to protect our country from Rebola — had led me to be part of the greatest crime against humanity in this country since white people had wiped out the aboriginal population nearly three hundred years ago.
“What about Sam and his family?” Annie said.
“When was the last time you heard from them?”
“I saw Gilda a few weeks ago. She came in with an infection. We didn’t have any antibiotics left but I was able to get to it before it got too bad.”
“They’ll be wiped out with the rest of them.”
“Surely we can try to save some people at least. If they’re going to be inoculating people in the regulated zone, can’t they do it in the de-reg as well?”
“I don’t think they will. I don’t think they want to save people.”
“Then we have to. We have to try.”
“I’ll see if Gendigm can help.”
I contacted Bruno through an encrypted line to to tell him what was happening and ask for his help. I’d been in touch with him on a number of occasions since working for the military and had come to trust Gendigm and their motives.
“We need to vaccinate innocent people living in the de-reg zone,” I told him.
“How are you planning on manufacturing a vaccine?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
“Why don’t you just tell people to stay inside?”
“It’ll get to them anyway. It’s airborne and can be carried by the wind. There’s no way they could avoid it.”
“I’ll put it to the board,” Bruno said. “They might say yes to helping with the manufacturing, but not with the distribution. And they might want something in return.”
“What can I give them?”
“We’re still interested in taking over Geneus. While they’ve got this military contract that’s obviously not possible, but maybe once it’s finished… We want to continue with your germline modification project.”
“So do I,” I said, thinking that was now our only chance of saving Annie.
“I’ll get back to you.”
“Well?” Annie said, when I hung up.
“He’s going to try. If we try to inoculate people, though, then there’s a good chance we’ll get caught. The military probably has spy networks all through the de-reg, keeping an eye on the rebels. Someone will say something. The best we can do is vaccinate a small group of people without them even realizing.”
“If we manage to vaccinate everyone first, though, it won’t matter if we get caught.”
“The chances of us doing that are unlikely, and if they want those people dead, they’re going to kill them whatever we do. This isn’t some Hollywood movie, Annie. We’re not going to be able to save everyone.”
Annie started crying, and she went and lay down on the bed in our room, face down on the pillow. I felt horrible for letting my anger overflow, and I followed her in and sat down beside her. I put my hand on her back, patti
ng her gently as she howled. I ran my fingers through her hair.
Suddenly I hated every single human being alive. Only humans were sick enough to try to wipe out members of their own species, and had the brains and the weapons to do it. The military was evil, but no more evil than all those people in the regulated zone like myself who had believed their bullshit, believed that we needed to defend ourselves.
All we really cared about was keeping ourselves safe, keeping ourselves comfortable. The world outside could go to hell and as long as we could turn a blind eye to it, pretend to ourselves that it wasn’t really happening, that it was no more real than anything else we saw on the net, distract ourselves with banalities like sport or famous people or cheap entertainment, then we went about our daily lives and did nothing.
“There must be something more we can do,” I said.
“Can’t you stop the project from working? If they need one hundred percent reliability in their vaccine before releasing the virus, then make sure they don’t get it.”
“I can try to delay for as long as possible. Buy us some time. Too long, though, and they’ll get suspicious. Besides, I’m not the only one working on the project. They’ll just get someone else to do it.”
“We obviously can’t go to the media,” Annie said. “What about another country? Is there someone who could stop this?”
“I don’t think any other countries really care at the moment. They’re all too busy with their own problems.”
“Then we’re fucked.”
“Yes. We are.”
The next day I went to see Savage.
“I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, General, but I think it might be a good idea if you either vaccinate people in the de-reg zone, or at the very least give them a placebo.”
Annie and I had realized that if we could convince the military to give people in the de-reg zones blank vaccines then our own vaccination program there might go unnoticed.
“Why’s that, Michael?” The General obviously didn’t take too well to being told how to do his job.
Conception: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (Perfectible Animals Book 1) Page 13
