“Don’t move or look around.” She couldn’t see who had spoken. The voice, coming from behind her, was deep and muffled; she thought instantly of the men wearing masks. “Keep looking at that tablet,” the man said. “Swipe the screen if you’re DT…good. I’m your contact. Listen closely. When I say ‘go’ count to ten then stand up and turn around. Follow me to the corner. When I stop at the crosswalk you go left, take the first right across the street, stay on the left and keep going until you hear three knocks. Clear your throat if you’re ready…great. Okay—don’t walk too fast—go.”
Still not sure who had been talking to her, Dellia followed his instructions, counting silently to ten. When she stood, grabbing her backpack, turned around and began to walk, she saw that the man was short and heavyset. He was wearing a baggy black hoodie with the hood pulled up over his stooped head—ridiculous attire for late summer in Texas. She followed and did as he had told her at the corner, willing herself not to glance over at him. The protesters weren’t nearly as thick now that she was off McKinney Avenue, and she wondered if she needed to cover up like her contact. The next street, a narrow cut-through not much bigger than a back alley, was deserted; not even normal pedestrians could be seen. Not far down the street, she heard the three knocks, coming from a car so old it might have been one of the very first electric cars they ever made. As she approached she glimpsed the large man, shrouded by his hood, in the driver seat. She slowly entered on the passenger side.
“Good,” he said. “Don’t talk. Look straight ahead. We’ll be somewhere safe soon.”
He pulled the car out onto the street and drove slowly along. This part of the city was fresh with signs of the rezoning efforts that had seen hundreds of older buildings and properties replaced or repurposed. Dellia found herself wondering how many of the protesters had been victims of that injustice too—or if they even realized Silte Corporation had been the leading voice in helping pass the legislation. The ancient car went by some old lofts and then came to what appeared to be an abandoned garage, probably one of many that had shut down after stubbornly refusing to adapt during the e-car boom. As they pulled in, one of the heavy doors opened and then shut again once they were fully inside, submerging them in total darkness.
“We’re in,” the man said, and almost immediately dim lights came on outside the car. He got out, so Dellia did likewise. The garage was cramped, musty with the smell of old oil. On the other side there was a decaying car that was obviously from the combustion engine era. The man beckoned and led her over to a grimy desk in the corner, sandwiched between rows of tall, rusty toolboxes and a precarious stack of tires. On the wall behind it, an iron staircase led up to a lone second-story room with whited-out windows all around it. Izza sat behind the desk, so Dellia sat in the chair opposite and looked at him head-on for the first time. The top of his face was covered in a ridiculous lacy purple mask complete with sequins and rhinestones; a black bandana covered his lower face, but he removed that to reveal a thick tangle of brown beard beneath. The skin beneath was dark.
“We can talk freely now,” he said. “I’m Izza, by the way, formerly of the Anti-Corp.”
“Formerly?” Had she been tricked?
“It would take too long to explain,” he said. “Just know that you’re lucky you found me and not someone in the AC or People Against Corporatocracy or one of the extremist factions. Me and the people I work with are doing what the AC was supposed to do, before it all went to shit. You can trust us.”
She wasn’t sure she could—not completely. But after the news about the virus advancing into the second stage much sooner than it was supposed to, she was willing to go against her better judgment and try to get something done. It wasn’t like she had any other options at this point. “Okay, let’s get to it,” she said.
He produced a surprisingly high-end tablet from his pocket and then unzipped his hoodie and flapped each side a few times, blasting Dellia with a whiff of his spoiled cheese body odor. “Fucking hot,” he said. He rolled his sleeves up before continuing. “First,” he said, placing the tablet on the desk with a recording app running, “tell me everything I need to know about the mind virus. Keep it simple. I’m not a scientist or nothing like that.”
“It’s not simple,” she said, crossing her arms, “but I’ll try. First of all, I wasn’t part of the team that created it. So I’m not an expert, just so you know. I was part of the designer virus research group though, and our work from that was primarily used for the project.
“They called it a neuropathic synthetic Rhabdovirus—that’s the same as Rabies. But we took to calling it Silvan’s virus, since it was a Silte Corp project. You can’t think of it like the flu or HIV or something: the RNA was built from scratch and this thing is smarter than anything natural. They released an active strain on the Anti-Corp demonstrators, probably infected hundreds. Basically, what it does after infection is make its way to the claustrum—that’s a consciousness center in the brain. It takes over key structures within the claustrum, creating the lethargic, apathetic state in its hosts. The crazy thing about it is it’s extremely efficient; it does what it wants to do before the host’s immune system really knows what’s going on.”
“How fast?” Izza asked. He seemed to be genuinely interested in what she was saying, even if he wasn’t following.
“The initial strain—the one Silte used as a weapon—was already activated and took about two days to begin affecting the brain. During this time, the victims are contagious only through direct exchange of bodily fluids, a lot like HIV. Those infected from the initial victims, however, carry a slower and much more contagious strain that can lay dormant for a week or two with no symptoms, all the while potentially spreading the virus through the air. This second stage of infection and rapid spread has come on much faster than I anticipated considering how relatively difficult it was for the virus to spread in the initial stage.” She paused to collect herself: the thought of this fact still worried her deeply.
Through the silence, Izza said, “I think that’s good enough for now. Next question: what is the purpose of the virus? Is it specifically to get rid of protesters?”
Thinking for a moment, Dellia began slowly, “I don’t know. I’ve thought about it a lot. Why would they use a method with so much collateral effect? I guess that’s why the mortality rate of Silvan’s virus is practically zero, which is really just an extraordinary achievement when you think about it. They wanted something that would make their enemies docile without killing too many people who posed no threat to them; hence the decade of research on how to engineer a virus.” They had to have a grander reason than that, she was sure, but just now there was not nearly enough time to be obsessing over Silvan’s reasons for wanting to take over the world.
“And you have a cure?” He sounded so hopeful that she felt bad for what she was about to say.
“No,” she told him. “But I do have something almost as good: a vaccine. It took me a whole year to get it right since I had to work secretly. It’s an inactivated vaccine based largely on the flu shot. It essentially gives your body a head start so you can fight it off before it makes it to your brain. Nothing fancy; this is not really my area. But it’ll be fast and easy to produce with my knowledge.” She stressed the last part: she needed to put a specific value on her life and safety.
“And it works?”
“Well…” Dellia looked sternly through the mask holes at his dark brown eyes. “I haven’t gotten sick yet.” She left off the “unless I have the second stage strain.” He was listening too closely not to fill that in himself.
For a long time Izza stared at her, and she held his gaze until she became uncomfortable and looked down at her knees. Finally, he said, “Do you have the vaccine?”
“With me? No, of course not.”
At that, his beard stretched upward in a smile and Dellia was alarmed at the creepy effect this had combined with his hood and lacy purple mask. “Yeah,” he said. “I would expect
as much. Let’s just hope wherever you chose to hide it was good enough—for all our sakes.”
She nodded. “So I gave you information,” she said confidently, hoping to not sound as anxious as she felt. “Now how are you going to help me?”
“We want the same thing you do.” He leaned back in his chair and perched his hands on his protruding belly. “But we’re not sure if you’re up to doing this job.”
For a few moments, Dellia sat there, seething. After all she had gone through in the last week this guy had the gall to question her ability to see it out. Or was this some garbage about her being a helpless female? Surely not in this age. Regardless, they weren’t going to part her from her work—because that’s what it was, and it was all she had left to show for her life as a scientist.
“I need to get the vaccine to the CDC,” she said evenly. “But I have to make sure it gets to the right people. You can help me with this or I can go on by myself, but I assure you I will not put this in someone else’s hands.”
Staring absently at the tablet, Izza sighed and said, “About five minutes after I leave here, a white van will back in. Get inside through the back. You’ll have everything you need in there for a long trip. Tell the driver through the peephole exactly where to go to pick up your assets—and be quick about it: we need to get you to Houston as fast as possible.”
“Houston?”
“You’ll receive more information later. Hold your tablet up.”
Pulling her tablet out of her backpack, Dellia hesitated, looking warily at Izza, who was now holding his own tablet up. “If you aren’t going to trust me now, you might as well leave here and find your own way to the CDC.” She stopped wavering and immediately held her tablet up, allowing him to tap his own against it. As she pulled away, ‘Download Complete’ flashed on the screen. “You have everything you need,’ Izza said. “Take it as a token of good faith that I didn’t hack your tab and upload it remotely.” He stood up.
“Wait.” She stood up too, reaching into her bag and fishing out a small vial, which she handed to him. “Here’s my token of good faith. For you or a friend. Take off the big cap, stick it in your upper arm, take off the small cap. Pretty easy.”
Even through his mask, she could see a look of genuine gratitude; he seemed struck dumb for a few seconds before taking the vial of vaccine and thanking her. As he stuffed it away in some inner pocket and zipped up his thick hoodie, Dellia asked, “Should I be covering up too? Like with a mask and everything?”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “We’ve had people assigned to keeping you undetected ever since you got back to Dallas.” He began walking to the car, turning back briefly to add, “We had to hide you from everyone else. Otherwise you would’ve been caught by now.” He left her there, brooding in silence. A minute later he was backing the old car out of the garage.
Humbled and embarrassed by the revelation of her own foolish naivety, Dellia watched him go and wondered if he had been at the demonstration outside Silte headquarters on that July night. Regardless, he surely at least knew people who were sick, and had probably been close enough to one or two of them to contract the virus.. She hated herself for thinking it, but she realized with regret that she might have just wasted one of her precious vials on someone who was already gone.
12
Sabrina had lost count of how many consecutive nights they had spent in a cheap hotel in neighborhoods she would rather avoid, but this had to make at least ten. If they were lucky, no one here would notice two weary travelers who may or may not be wanted by the most powerful people in the world: the ones peering down from the tallest building in the city. Unlike all the other hotels, though, this soggy, bug-infested place would be home for a while. At least that’s what her hope was. Now that they were in Dallas, maybe they wouldn’t have to move around so much.
There were three knocks at the door, and then the sound of a card sliding into the slot. Jason pushed his way into the room backward, his hands full with the rest of the stuff from the car. “We’re all checked in,” he said.
“For how many nights?”
“Tonight, and as many more as we need.” He deposited the bags of food and other essentials on the bed. “I told the guy at the desk I’d pay each day in cash by wallet app. I still don’t think it’s a good idea to have them keep the fake account on file, even at a place like this.”
Every time the phony bank account was brought up, Sabrina felt a little guilty—and more than a little dirty. The first thing Jason had done as they pulled away from his house was to get his shady friend Seito to help set up the account under a made-up identity and fill it with money that did not ‘technically’ exist; they did it even before taking her car off the surveillance grid. This was the kind of thing that used to lead to major raids and arrests when Guardian was still employed by the government. She had helped uncover and prosecute entire rings of bank fraud, and now she was doing it herself. She had to admit, though, it was a much smarter way of getting money than her original idea of going to her bank, closing her accounts out and having the funds transferred to a digital wallet. At least this way Erris still had access to their joint account. Oh why did I have to think about her?
Desperate to take her mind off what she had left behind, she said, “How is the account, anyway? I mean, we’ve spent a lot now.”
With a lazy wave of his hand, Jason said, “Seito fixed that already. He’s keeping an eye on our finances now—or someone is.” He went and sat at the little table and pulled out his tablet: an act that had become a sort of monotonous routine at every stop on the road they had made. “We’re valuable assets now, remember?”
“Uh-huh.” She didn’t at all like that they were still tacking on more offenses to those they had committed so far. But then, when you were on the run from superpowers like Silte and the GPA your very existence was an offense, at least so far as it took place outside of their custody. When you considered that, breaking a few laws didn’t seem so horrible as long as no one got hurt. There was probably no going back for her anyway.
“I’m going to check in with Seito,” Jason said. “You might want to pull a chair up. He’ll probably have some new information from the AC. Maybe instructions or something.”
Now intrigued, Sabrina pulled the other chair around the table to sit by him as he sent a vid-call request to his friend. According to Jason’s assurances, the communication app he used to stay in touch with the Anti-Corp via Seito was completely secure and untraceable; it apparently would not even work if Sabrina tried to use it alone on his tablet. The only way it was even accessible while she, never having been a member of the hacktivist group non-E, sat here was because Jason had turned off some of the more strict (and perhaps unnecessary) security features. She didn’t like being entirely dependent on another person with something so vital, but at least he was proving loyal and trustworthy so far.
“Where are you?” Seito’s voice, fast and high-pitched, rang out two seconds before his frantic face appeared on the screen.
“Dallas, south edge of downtown,” Jason said. “We just—”
“Get out of there!” The alarming volume to his voice made both Jason and Sabrina jump. “Get in your car and go now. South. Highway. I’ll call you soon.” The call cut off at his end, leaving a stunned silence behind.
After a few seconds of staring at the blank screen, Jason asked, “Do you think we should go?”
“What do you think?” Sabrina asked. “He’s your friend. Do you trust him enough to listen to him?”
For a while, Jason was silent, deep in thought. “If Seito says to go,” he said, “we should go.” He stood up quickly, crossing the room to the bags and grabbing a full load. “We should go now. You finish here. I’ll get the car.”
* * *
It was a little after 7 p.m.; the evening rush—no more than a slight slowdown in recent days—was over, but there was still enough light in the sky that some of the headlights weren’t on yet. It was hot, stifli
ng, even with the climate control keeping their bodies at an optimal temperature; the sweat covering Sabrina after her luggage-laden jog from the room to the car was refusing to dry, making her feel sticky and disgusting. Texas is hot, she thought, not for the first time.
I-45 out of Dallas was oddly deserted. Despite this, Jason drove her car carefully, staying close to the speed limit; getting pulled over for speeding was not an option for them. The GPA didn’t bother with traffic stops, but if the Lone Star Rangers or the Southern Patrol pulled them over it was a sure bet Guardian would find out. Though, if Seito’s panicked state wasn’t just paranoia, then they may not need to worry about private police or militia outside of the city since they would presumably all be rushing in for the action.
Seito had called almost immediately after they were on the highway. He had insisted that he hold off on an explanation and instead tell them exactly where they were going and why; he might be cut off abruptly, he had explained hurriedly, and there was no guarantee he could call back. He had then rushed into telling them to head to Houston, more specifically Silte’s Houston Warehouse. Sabrina had felt a stab of regret when she heard him mention it, but she listened closely to what he said, ready to seize on the moment she had waited for.
The orders had come from high up the Anti-Corp ranks: they were to go to the Warehouse and, after rendezvousing with a group of AC people in the area, free a group of the movement’s informers and sympathizers who were imprisoned there after being discovered in Silte’s corporate family. They were relying on Sabrina’s knowledge of Guardian’s standard procedure and computer systems to make the rescue a success, since it had been determined that the GPA was stationed there. But Sabrina wasn’t sure that was wise; she may have intimate knowledge of the GPA, but she was a detective, not a special task force operative. Infiltrations and hostage liberations were as foreign to her as crime scene investigation was to an assault officer pumped full of steroids. This was not a welcome task, but the alternative meant leaving innocent people to suffer the same fate as those in the report that had cost Sabrina her job.
Dreams in the Tower Part 2 Page 3
