Burn

by Sarah Fine

  “My mom can help us figure it out,” I say, feeling my muscles tense with energy and curiosity. A clue. A lead. Something to pin my shredded hopes on. We grab a broom and dustpan and carefully scrape the chips and the ooze onto the pan, then carry it to the morgue.

  “Mom?” I call, immediately recognizing the whine of a bone saw coming from behind the closed doors of her autopsy room. When he hears it, Race winces and tells me he’ll wait outside.

  A moment later, the whine stops abruptly, and my mother leans out of the chamber. She’s wearing goggles and gloves. A face mask is tucked beneath her chin. “Tate,” she says wearily. “I’ve just gotten started. Dr. Ackerman was going to assist, but once again he’s got his hands full.”

  I glance around, noting the hum of a mass spectrometer against the wall. “Are you sampling those anomalies? Any signs of a parasite or anything like that?”

  “I have a handful of odd cellular and chromosomal findings, but that’s it. I’ve done the thoracic and abdominal dissections. No findings that indicate parasitic activity.” Her lips press together for a moment. “In fact, all three of them seem perfectly healthy apart from the bullet wounds,” she says in an unsteady voice, reminding me that two of the men she’s been cutting open had been her friends for years.

  “What are the odd findings? You mean the weird secretory glands in their skin? Did the other two bodies have them, too?” I ask, trying to bring her to a more objective place, where she can think of them as a collection of lab results instead of dead comrades, at least for the time being.

  She switches into scientist mode quickly. “All three bodies had the additional secretory glands. I haven’t had time to further examine their function, though. But I’ve confirmed the DNA profiles as Charles and George, so even if the Sicarii somehow took them over, it didn’t change their basic genetic makeup. However, their chromosomes are somewhat strange. The telomeres are unusually long, and their levels of telomerase are off the charts.”

  “Telomeres . . . like, the ends of their chromosomes?”

  “Correct. The parts that protect the DNA sequences from degrading or mutating.”

  “Aren’t they associated with aging or something?” It was all over the news last year, the idea that telomerase, this enzyme that causes those telomere endcaps to lengthen, might slow the aging process.

  “That’s the theory. As chromosomes replicate, they degrade, resulting in a loss of genetic information and integrity. Telomeres keep that from happening as quickly, but they shorten over time, and when they get too short, the cell stops dividing and dies. Lack of telomerase and short telomeres are common in people with various premature aging disorders.”

  “And both George and Willetts have a lot of telomerase.”

  Her dark eyes are steady on mine. “The deceased Core agent does as well. Far beyond the normal range. Basically . . . immortal.”

  My mouth drops open. “Like, they’d stopped aging?”

  She nods slowly. “I’ve just started the intracranial examination. Perhaps I’ll find some answers there.”

  She’s cutting their skulls open to look at their brains, hence the sound of the bone saw. “I just wanted to drop these components off,” I say. “They’re from the ship wreckage. I’m wondering if you can take a look at these?” I hold up the dustpan full of oozing chips.

  She frowns and blows a wisp of hair upward, away from her face. “When I’m finished.”

  “I think these might help us figure out what the scanner was supposed to be used for,” I tell her. “And what Dad meant when he said it was the key to our survival.”

  She eyes the chips as I set the dustpan on the stainless steel lab table in the center of the room. “He might not have meant the specific device. He may have been referring to the overall tech—”

  “No,” I say firmly, my throat getting tight. “I was there. I know what he said, Mom.”

  She stares at me for a few seconds, and then the lines in her expression soften. “Okay. When I find a stopping point, I’ll take a look.”

  I thank her and join Race in the hallway. He’s leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, and I wonder if he’s slept at all since arriving on the compound just over twenty-four hours ago. As much as I want to hate him, like Rufus, I feel a begrudging respect for him and the pressures he’s been under. He’s not the cold, merciless machine I thought he was when he was chasing us to get the scanner, and I understand his desperation now. He also cares about his agents, and he seems to regret what happened with my dad. I wonder what Dad would think if he knew we were working together now, if he’d be furious or if he’d understand that I have no choice.

  It’s one more thing I’ll never know about Frederick Archer.Race opens his eyes when he hears me coming and pushes himself off the wall. “How are the autopsies going?”

  I fill him in about the secretory glands my mom discovered in the men’s skin, as well as the strange telomere and telomerase findings.

  “But no signs of the parasite?” he asks.

  “None.”

  His jaw clenches. “So we still have no idea how they move from host to host.”

  “Mom’s working on it. She said she’d take a break to look at those chips, though. Even if we can’t figure out the Sicarii, maybe we can find a way to beat them.”

  He crosses his arms over his chest once we reach the elevator banks. “We could do that a lot faster if we actually had the scanner.”

  “Maybe we should go check how Angus is doing with Rufus,” I suggest.

  It feels a little weird as we stride down the administrative hall together, me and Race Lavin, teaming up to fight a common enemy. I mean, on Thursday morning—just three days ago—I was choking him out on the floor of a Walmart. But he’s a calm, steady presence at my side, and right now, that makes me feel less alone in all of this.

  We find Angus in the CFO office, mostly by tracking the hoarse barks of Rufus’s outrage.

  “Did he confess?” Race asks as we enter. Rufus is nowhere in sight, but I can hear his grumbling coming from an office down the hall.

  Angus glances at us and shakes his head, which is when I notice Congers across the room, tight-lipped and grim as he talks into a com device. My stomach drops. “Is he talking to the defense stations? Have they spotted scout ships?”

  “No, thank God. No sign of them,” says Angus.

  “Yet,” says Race.

  Angus gives Congers a concerned look. “We’re bringing in another suspect. Rufus said he only approached and touched the keypad on the secure room after seeing someone else there.”

  Race looks back and forth between Angus and Congers. The tension in this room is stifling. “Who?”

  “My son,” Congers snaps before returning to his conversation. He’s telling his agents to stand down, and he’s obviously getting some pushback.

  “If he really saw someone in the hallway who shouldn’t have been there, why didn’t he report it immediately?” I ask.

  “Because of the fire in the factory!” Rufus roars from the other room, his gruff voice accompanied by the rattling of what I can only assume are handcuffs. Rufus must be close to having a stroke.

  “Weren’t you working with Rufus on the security system?” I ask Congers as he ends his phone call.

  He nods. “Just before the fire broke out, Rufus was supposed to be checking the surge protection in the circuit breakers along this hallway.”

  “Making it either the perfect opportunity or an unfortunate coincidence?” Race says.

  Angus scratches at his beard. He’s got grime smeared across his shirt, and his sleeves are rolled up, revealing his massive, freckled forearms. “I’d been in here all morning since you put that stuff on the door. But maybe five minutes before the fire, I’d left to go to lunch, and when I reached the atrium, I sent two guards from the main entrance back to my office
to guard the scanner. It couldn’t have been unguarded for more than a minute or two.”

  Kellan walks in with two other guards, surrounding a cuffed Graham Congers, who is stone-faced and pale. “Sir, I did what you asked. The guards searched Mr. Bishop’s quarters, and they’re in the process of searching the Core agents’ quarters as well. We haven’t found anything yet.”

  That’s the reason Congers was telling them to stand down. No doubt the Core is pissed at having suspicion cast on them again. The whole thing is exhausting and frustrating. Someone has the scanner, and I’m desperate to have it back in my hands. It’s a vulnerable feeling, not knowing who the enemy is. For all we know, Rufus is being controlled by something that’s infiltrated his body and mind.

  Kellan jerks his head toward Graham and touches the black light wand at his belt. “His hands were covered in the vitamin solution. Bottom of his shoes, too.”

  “Because I was here and touched the keypad,” Graham snaps. “I told you that already.”

  “Why?” Congers demands. “Why were you even in this office?” He looks utterly disgusted with his son, and my gut clenches.

  Graham turns to his father, their gray-green eyes locking in a silent battle. “I wanted to catch whoever was trying to steal the device,” he says. “And I saw someone go in after Mr. McClaren walked out.” He looks away, swallowing hard under the anger in his father’s expression.

  “Did you recognize him?” Angus asks, his gaze slanting toward the office where Rufus is being held.

  Graham looks at me and then at Angus. “Yeah. He’s one of you guys. Pale-blond hair.”

  “Brayton?” I ask.

  Graham shrugs. “I don’t know his name. He’s a middle-aged guy. He was starting to punch in a code when I peeked in here, but he stopped when he saw me and took off.” He points to a back hallway across the suite. “The guy was sprinting. I was suspicious.”

  “Where does that hallway lead?” Congers asks.

  “To some other offices, an emergency exit to the building, and another hallway leading to the main corridor,” says Graham. “After I checked to make sure the storage room door was still locked, I went back there. That’s where I was when I heard the explosion. But the blond guy was long gone.”

  Angus’s brow furrows. “Brayton is very ill. The last thing he can do right now is sprint.”

  “He looked pretty damn healthy at breakfast this morning,” Congers says in a hard voice. “And you did deny him access to anything but janitorial duty, I believe. Plenty of reason for him to be upset.”

  “He was definitely out of breath before he went into the factory,” I add. “But . . . his hands and shoes were clean when Kellan scanned them after the fire. No fluorescence. And if the timing is as you describe, he would have run straight from the hallway into the atrium, because the alarms went off a minute or so later.”

  “Not to mention that I saw him come out of the elevators when the alarm went off,” calls Rufus. “I hate the bastard, but I can tell you he didn’t come out of this hallway.”

  I rub at an aching spot on my temple. “We can’t forget that both Brayton and Rufus were in the atrium when the actual theft occurred. Even if either of them was trying to take it before, neither could have shot the guards and stolen the device.”

  “Which means we may be dealing with a conspiracy,” says Congers.

  “I had nothing to do with this,” Graham says quietly. “You know I’d never do anything like this.” He starts to take a step toward Congers, but the Black Box guards grab his arms. Graham grimaces. “Dad. You know I wouldn’t!”

  Congers’s gaze snaps to his son. “You didn’t follow orders.” He looks away quickly, so he doesn’t see Graham’s shoulders hunch forward, like he’s been punched in the stomach. “Do what you need to do,” Congers says to Kellan.

  Kellan and his guards lead a shell-shocked Graham to a separate office to question him further while Angus returns his attention to the surveillance footage, which is full of gaps. His meaty fists are white-knuckled with bottled-up anger.

  I take a step back, the same frustration and fatigue rolling over me. “I need to go find Christina,” I say. “I’ll check back with you guys later.”

  Congers barely acknowledges me because his cell phone is ringing, but Race makes as if he’s going to follow me out. “They were going to try to salvage the combat vehicles, weren’t they?” he asks me. “I was hoping we could take another look at the plans and the actual vehicles, in case your father used some of the same wreckage components.”

  But as we reach the door, Congers calls out, lifting his chin away from the phone at his ear. “Lavin. Get back here.”

  Race waves me on. I head down the hall and into the atrium, which is quiet now that all the patients have been moved. The acrid stench of burning still hangs heavy in the air, though, and the smoke outside lends a grayish cast to the dwindling daylight as I emerge into the open courtyard between the main building and the factory. A large squad of uninjured workers is busy clearing out debris from the factory floor. Then I hear a cheer from the parking lot, so at odds with the grim scene in front of me. I look out to the lot beyond the burned-out factory, and there’s a crowd clustered around what is unmistakably a row of combat vehicles. Six of them. I jog over to see more workers tinkering with them, wiping their shiny exteriors, welding panels, oiling the rails of the autocannons. Arrayed in front of the vehicles, a few feet beyond their hoods, are weapons consoles much like the one I used to blast a hole in the factory wall this afternoon. They haven’t been placed inside the vehicles yet and are hooked up to huge generators rumbling off to our right.

  “Tate!” Christina’s hoarse voice is like pure relief to me, and I turn to see her walking toward me. Her eyes are red and swollen, and she’s rubbing at her throat, but still she looks happy. “Wait until you see this. Manuel is a genius.”

  Standing head and shoulders taller than the cluster of folks near the consoles, Manuel blushes at her praise. “We were able to salvage these six from the factory floor, and we gassed them up and got them out here so we could complete assembly as quickly as possible. I’ve set up an interactive simulation using the available information about the Sicarii scout ships. It’s based on witness reports from Mr. Congers, Dr. Shirazi, and some of the other agents, but it was the best I could do. So as my volunteers do the simulation, I’m going to gather data on the system capabilities so I can calibrate these babies before we install them.”

  He gestures at Christina and Leo—and Daniel Sung, who is among a small group of Core agents who has joined the effort to salvage the combat vehicles. “Leo said you got some kind of satellite shield up to protect the planet,” Manuel says to me, lowering his voice. “I want to do my part to protect that shield. Which means protecting Black Box.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I had no idea you guys would get this far so soon.”

  “We’re not done yet,” Sung says as he flexes his fingers. His dark brown eyes shine with eagerness as he gazes at the weapons console in front of him. Right now he looks less like a disciplined young agent and more like a caffeine-fueled gamer about to try out the newest Call of Duty. “You want us to hop in and just start shooting, Manuel?”

  Manuel chuckles. “You can try. It’s harder than it looks.”

  Leo, Sung, and Christina get into three of the four gunner pits, settling in on the swiveling seats. Leo’s spinning like a top, but Christina sees me eyeing the fourth console. “Hey, Manuel, can Tate give it a try?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t see why not.”

  Leo snorts. “He already knows how to use them, as evidenced by the massive hole in the factory wall.”

  “What am I supposed to do with those?” I point to the two padded circles that look like automated blood-pressure cuffs positioned in front of the cannon control sticks. “Didn’t exactly have time to figure it out during the fire.”<
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  “They have these sensors in them that detect muscle contractions. Not exactly sure why.” Manuel’s black hair falls over his brow as he bows his head. “We’re following your dad’s plans exactly. I’m still trying to figure out what those lenses do. He didn’t leave a lot of explanations.”

  That’s true in so many ways, and once again, my chest aches. “I know. I’m sorry—”

  “No, don’t be. Your dad was a genius. I want to do justice to his designs, because, man, they are brilliant.” Manuel pats the hood of one of the vehicles. “I was thinking we should call them Archers. You think he would have liked that?”

  The ache turns to a sharp pang. Would he have liked that? I return Manuel’s smile. “Yeah,” I say, my voice catching. “I think he would have thought that was cool.”

  “Archers it is,” says Manuel, grinning. “Let’s see what they can do.”

  With the Archers looming behind us, crawling with workers racing against the clock to get this tiny assault force battle-ready, I climb into the gunner pit. We all settle our arms in the cuffs and fiddle with the stick controls, which swivel along a circular track, too, that’s set closer to the view screens. Once we’re all in, Manuel fires up the consoles. On my viewing screen a shockingly familiar shape appears, one of the hovering obelisk ships of the Sicarii.

  “If you see that round hole in the bottom half open up,” says Manuel, “watch out. We’re hoping the armor can withstand a hit, but Dr. Shirazi said it turned her armored minivan into a crushed soda can with one shot.”

  “Let’s see if we can’t take them out, then,” mutters Sung, his chair swiveling, his eyes riveted to the shimmering obelisk on the screen. He jams his thumb on a button. On our screens, we see a blast of light fly at the Sicarii ship, but it spins out of the way.

  We all start shooting, but as it turns out, Manuel is extremely good at creating simulations. The alien ships move just like the ones I’ve seen, fluid and lethal. Our consoles bounce and jitter as the program moves us across all types of terrain. We can’t control the exact direction or speed of the vehicle, because we’re gunners—not drivers. It takes two to operate an Archer. And it’s a good thing this is a simulation, because if this were real life, we’d be toast. Our shots fly wide, short, wild, high, off. Our consoles are rigged to shut down once we’ve taken three hits from a Sicarii ship, and I’ve taken two before I know what’s happening. My arms are sweating inside the cuffs, and I’m fighting to get my seat to swivel.