“Why the sudden concern for her welfare?” Greg saw no point in arguing that he didn’t know where she was.
“Because I have been ordered by the President of the United States to bring her in alive, and if possible, unharmed. We will find her, even if it takes a hundred more agents, or even a thousand more. We both know what happened the last time someone tried to bring her in, and I don’t want a repeat of that.” Patton saw a new side of Heller; the man genuinely did not want Amanda hurt.
“You said that Amanda was the only person to survive the original virus, Greg,” Patton said, unexpectedly aligning himself with Heller. “It stands to reason that if there is an outbreak of one of this virus’s babies, she could be very helpful.”
“I know that, and I don’t want to see anyone hurt either, but this is my daughter in law, my son’s wife, and the mother of my grandson.” He stared into Patton’s dark eyes and nearly jumped out of his chair when Heller’s cell phone went off.
“Jesus Christ, turn that thing down,” Patton said as Heller answered the phone.
The call lasted less than ten seconds. “I see. Keep me posted,” said Heller, and hung up. Then he announced, “Amanda is driving a Jeep Cherokee, Colorado license GNM 529. It is currently parked at an office complex about three miles from here. There is a white female inside that fits the description of Amanda Flynn.” He spoke without emotion. “What do I do, Greg?”
Greg struggled with himself. It wasn’t a question of right or wrong. That was easy. Amanda could save countless lives, and because of that, he knew that in the end he would do what was right. It was a question of betrayal, and losing his adopted daughter, and with her, the connection he had with his dead son and grandson. That alone would be tragic, but he knew that if the bond that held Amanda to Greg and Lisa was broken, she would be lost to the evil that had almost consumed her six years ago.
“Tell your people to stand down, now,” Greg said.
“You know I can’t do that, Greg,” Heller said gently.
“If you don’t, she will kill them all,” Greg said, his voice rising. “Every one of them.”
“That’s not possible Greg, we—”
“Tell them to back off now! If they can see her, then she knows where they are. If you back her into a corner, people are going to die.” Greg’s face was turning red.
Patton finally connected the dots between Reisch and Amanda. “Do it, Heller. Do it now! We already have one man down, we don’t need others.”
“Not until someone tells me what’s really going on here. How can she kill people she can’t see?”
“With a single goddamn thought, you arrogant son of a bitch!” Greg screamed and yanked the cell phone from the FBI agent’s hand. He punched a few buttons while Patton blocked Heller’s attempts to retrieve his phone. “This is Detective Greg Flynn. I’m with Special Agent Heller. Do not under any circumstances approach that Jeep. Terminate all surveillance now!” He repeated the message, but no one responded.
The on-again, off-again flurries were back on again, but it wasn’t snowing hard enough to obscure their view of her, even with dusk approaching. There were five of them now, and more on the way. She had sensed the lone FBI agent as soon as she had left Oliver and the church. He followed her Jeep discreetly while calling for backup, and Amanda drove aimlessly through a residential neighborhood just to make his job a little more difficult. He was reasonably competent, and only twice did she glimpse his gray Ford. She led him to a small office complex just outside of downtown and then parked. He pulled into an adjacent supermarket and watched her, waiting for backup. He had enough experience to put his ego in check and do things correctly, which disappointed Amanda. She had half hoped that he would see her as an unaware 130-pound woman who would offer no resistance to his sudden appearance, badge and weapon drawn. But no, he wasn’t going to confront her until everyone was in place. Five minutes after he had parked, four more agents arrived and quickly fanned out to cover any possible escape routes. Then, everyone just sat and waited for orders.
She searched the mind of the nearest agent and found nothing of interest. He had no idea who or what Amanda was beyond being a fugitive. She hopped from mind to mind until one of their phones rang, and Greg’s face suddenly filled her mind. He was irate and full of fear, his emotions pulling her across dozens of city blocks. “With a single goddamn thought—” she heard him say, and understanding blossomed in the minds of the two men that stood next to her father-in-law. Greg had finally told someone what she had become. Her secret was out. She was surprised that it didn’t much matter to her; maybe it was because there were others now. Reisch and Oliver would certainly be less circumspect with their abilities, and there were probably going to be many more soon. There really was no secret left to protect.
The agents were becoming antsy; worried that she would leave the trap they were ready to spring. Escaping them would be child’s play. With only five minds to control, she could quite easily walk over to the supermarket, find a car she liked, and simply drive away as they continued to watch her empty Jeep. Or, with even less effort, she could kill them all, right where they sat. Mittens got a small thrill from that thought, but it was short-lived. She wasn’t going to kill anyone today, except maybe Reisch, and Mittens knew it. She felt for the German, but he was still lost in the mist of a hundred thousand other minds.
The agents were ordered to move in closer, giving Amanda only a few minutes before they swarmed her Jeep. She needed to disable them, not kill them, and make it absolutely clear that she was beyond their reach. A tiny thrill made her heart beat a little faster. Cruelty had never been part of her before the Change, but it certainly was afterwards. It was a powerful and wonderfully self-indulgent emotion, which pulled at her relentlessly.
The sedan behind her was feeding live images to a Command Center in Denver. She tried to follow the feed back to the other end but couldn’t quite reach without a discrete human consciousness directing her. It didn’t matter; whoever was at the other end would be suitably shocked as she calmly went to each of the fallen agents and relieved them of their weapons and identification. It would be a clear message to leave her alone.
Amanda heard and felt someone give the command to take her. Three agents sprung from their hiding positions and started sprinting towards her. Two more gunned their cars to block her Jeep. She hesitated only a moment and then hit them all with a concentrated blast of mental energy. It was only a tiny fraction of what she was capable of, but it was more than enough to knock them unconscious. She left the video feed running. She had an agent to her left, one to her right, and in one behind her; all three had landed where she hit them. Both of the drivers had managed to slam their sedans into parked cars, and aside from being unconscious, were otherwise okay. Amanda turned to gather her things and then said good-bye to her loyal and reliable Jeep. She slowly and deliberately climbed out into the snow. She turned towards the camera so that they could plainly see her and then walked to each of the three agents and took their handguns and IDs. Unclipping the radio from the last man’s belt, she hit the transmit button.
“They’re not dead,” she said. “But they very well could have been.” She waited for a reply.
It took half a minute for a voice to answer. “What do you want, Amanda?” the voice asked without introduction.
“First, don’t put me in a position where I have to hurt people again.” Her mind searched for the voice and found its owner in a Denver high-rise. It was quite a stretch, but she could just see him as well as a dozen other agents listening and watching her image on a monitor. “You’re an assistant director, aren’t you, Mr. Benedict?”
“Would you like to tell me how you know that, Amanda?” His voice was calm, but all around him people were scrambling, trying to coordinate the movements of other agents.
“No, I don’t think I will. But I will tell you that if I feel another FBI agent within five miles of me, you may not get them back in one piece.” Mittens was on his feet and pacing
through her mind. She watched as Benedict waved his arms, stopping the efforts to trap her. “Thank you, Ron. Now, I want you to leave the Flynns and me alone. My patience has worn thin. If I sense anyone following me, Greg, or Lisa, I will punish them, and I will hold you responsible. Am I clear?”
“I’m not in a position to do that,” Benedict said. This was true. The order to take Amanda into custody had come directly from the White House.
“Mr. Benedict, I suggest you put yourself in that position. Tell the director, so he can tell the president what happened here tonight. Let them know what could have happened here as well, because next time it will.”
The agent beneath her began to stir, and she restrained him. She wondered for a moment if a more dramatic demonstration of her ability was in order. She decided against it, for the time being. “I have no desire to hurt anyone, or be taken into custody.”
“This has nothing to do with what happened six years ago. We need your help.” Benedict alone knew why they had to take Amanda, and he had been ordered to keep that secret.
“You don’t need my help,” Amanda had to restrain the minds of two more agents; it was time to be going.
“People are dying, Amanda,” Benedict said gently.
“I’m not responsible for that.” Amanda could tell that he knew that; the name Klaus Reisch floated through his consciousness. “You’re too late; everyone here either is or will soon be infected. I can’t help them anymore; pass that on to Martin.” The realization that all these people were going to die suddenly struck her, and for the first time in seven years, she felt a stab of guilt. “Back off, and I will take care of this. After it’s done, we can talk about what I can do for Nathan Martin.”
“We can take care of the German. Come in and help us now.” Benedict had to try to get her to surrender, even though he knew she wouldn’t.
She shook her head. “You have no idea what he’s capable of. He will kill you all if it suits his need or his fancy, and you have a better chance of stopping me than him.”
The video camera exploded as Amanda dropped the radio receiver and walked away.
“So all this is about a book written by a discredited author more than half a century ago. Excuse my sarcasm, Doctor, but I find that a little hard to believe,” General McDaniels said as their Suburban screamed down the dark streets of Washington.
“It’s not about The Population Bomb per se. It’s the theory behind the book: Paul Ehrlich theorized that the earth can sustain a finite number of human beings before a series of events was initiated that would ultimate lead to our extinction. He made a number of dire predictions if worldwide conditions weren’t changed. All of them proved to be inaccurate, but that didn’t stop his ideas from entering the consciousness of scientific thought. People were influenced by his theories.”
“So Avanti was a disciple.”
“Disciple is too strong a word. Ehrlich believed something and shaped facts to fit that belief; Jaime would never accept that intellectual dishonesty,” Martin said.
“So you are saying that there are facts to back this outlandish theory?” McDaniels was finally surrendering to the laws of momentum by bracing himself within the careening vehicle.
“I don’t think you fully understand Avanti, General. He’s not insane, or some nut with an idea. He is a true believer and not because he blindly accepts what he has been told or has read.” The car suddenly swerved around a corner throwing Martin against the window. “To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely convinced that he’s wrong. In many ways, our species is in as much danger as you and I are right now.”
“Sergeant, I told you to get us there quickly, but I did mean alive,” McDaniels yelled to the driver.
“Sorry sir, but we are being followed. Fairly sophisticated but not aggressive.” The sergeant answered without emotion or taking his eyes off of the road.
Martin wheeled around to look out the rear window but was blinded by the headlights of the trailing Suburban. “Who would be following us?”
“Any number of people, some good, some not so good. It will be handled.” McDaniels didn’t bother turning around and gave Martin a moment to return to his seat.” So you are a believer in this pseudoscience as well?”
“I wouldn’t label it as a pseudoscience,” Martin said nervously as he slid back into his seat.
“It’s become one. When I hear the same facts quoted by radical environmentalists and gun-toting isolationists, I have a tendency to discount them.”
“Wow, with a philosophy like that, how did you ever get through your confirmation hearings?” Martin scoffed. “People basically suck; excuse my French. They will use any tool at their disposal to advance their own personal agenda. Facts don’t lie, people do, and when you pull all those facts together, the future becomes a very scary place. I’m not just talking about global warming; I’m talking about the loss of species diversity, deforestation, the depletion of natural resources—the list is as long as your arm, and each one of those inconvenient facts has an impact on human survival, whether we believe them or not.”
“I believe in our ability to survive; it is the thing that we do best,” McDaniels answered simply.
“Then you must stink at what you do, because your job is to make sure our enemies don’t survive,” Martin laughed sarcastically again.
“My job is not to kill; my job is to protect the United States.”
“Then how are you going to protect it from the seven billion incubators that inhabit this planet and the tendency of pathogens to mutate?”
“That’s your job.”
“Well, I’ll be the first to admit that I stink at my job. We have almost no natural defenses, and what little science can do will be too little too late. HIV, Bird-flu, SARS, NIM, and all the others that came before them matured within human tissue. The greater the mass of human tissue, the greater the probability that something really nasty will develop. There are some very serious-minded people who believe that we are on the verge of a massive natural pandemic, the results of which would be death tolls in the billions. And with the way societies and economies have become so interdependent, such a disruption would lead to famines and wars severe enough to finish the rest of us off.”
“Which brings us back to Avanti. He told you that he was working outside the wishes and desires of Jeser. Do you believe him?”
“I do; I doubt he’d lie to me—that’s not his style. In some ways, he’s a lot like he was twenty years ago, he wants me to know that he was the one who engineered this virus and is personally responsible for its dissemination. He wants to be remembered as someone who had the courage to do what others were afraid to do. It’s so insane,” Nathan said softly. “He twisted the knife by telling me that he used my computer models to convince Jeser that the outbreak could be controlled. He stole them, which means that someone in my department is working for him, or them.” Martin said sadly. “The outbreak in Colorado is supposed to get the world’s attention so that the rest of the world will close their borders to the United States. That’s supposed to limit the spread of the infection.” Martin shook his head. ”They’re going to issue some demands so that they appear reasonable and then release the original virus no matter what we do.”
A moment of thoughtful silence followed. “Avanti wants you to reproduce that vaccine to slow or stop the outbreak,” McDaniels motioned towards the small vial in Martin’s hand. “To save just enough so that humanity survives, but society doesn’t.”
“One thousand doses, if he’s correct.” He gripped the bottle tighter. “I know what you’re wondering: is there time to mass-produce this? The answer is no. It would take several months to maybe a year before we could produce any reasonable quantity, and I’m guessing that if things go as Avanti thinks they will, we have two maybe three months before worldwide dissemination. At that point, there’s no stopping it.”
Reisch slept with the television on and a commercial full of screaming children awakened him. He suffered t
hrough thirty seconds of it before finally finding the remote control and turning the TV off. The sounds of the screaming and squealing children still rattled inside his painful head. American television was reason enough to condemn humanity.
The bedside clock said that it was exactly six o’clock, and to Klaus’s great relief, he found that his hand had recovered most of its function. His thinking was still a little thick, but it had improved enough that he could defend himself; at least against humans.
He began to stretch, but then stiffened; a hint of something foreign drifted across his mind. He tried to seize the trace of mental energy, but it was gone, or perhaps it had never been there at all. He was still on guard after his encounter with Amanda, and his control over his emotions was erratic. She had planted a seed of doubt in his mind, and for the first time in years he felt vulnerable. Suddenly, he took the remote control and threw it against the wall. It shattered into a hundred pieces, and after an instant of delight, he rebuked himself. He needed to stay in control; he couldn’t afford any more self-indulgent displays.
He swung his legs off the side of the bed, anxious to be up and moving, but as soon as his feet touched the floor, he knew something was wrong. There was activity all around him. Dozens and dozens of minds were awake and active.
“Military,” he said with a raspy voice. They were setting up roadblocks on all of the main roads. His mind drifted through the throng of bored and cold soldiers, but none of them knew why they were here, or why they had been issued live ammunition. He would have to find an officer or someone else of importance to find out just how much danger he was in. The problem was that taking over a mind was like shooting off a flare for Amanda; in an instant, she would know exactly where to find him, and he wasn’t quite ready for their next meeting. He waited a moment, giving destiny the opportunity to provide him with the information that he needed, but after several minutes of silence, he decided to shower instead.
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