Caroline set aside those thoughts as she paused in the hall to remove her protective gear. The sister who’d provided it had shown her with what care the outfit had to be put on and taken off—if it was going to be of any use. And Caroline certainly didn’t want to be brought low by the flu virus, not when she was so close to victory. So she took her time and focused on taking everything off in the right order. Then she spent a few minutes in front of the mirror fixing her hair and checking her makeup. Now she was ready to go on stage.
Taking a deep breath, she opened the front door and stepped out onto the porch with her head high, imagining herself in the role Eva Peron. She waited for the word to quickly spread and every eye to turn to her.
“Fellow citizens, I know you’re upset. And with good reason. All along the administration has operated in secret, failing to keep us informed about our situation. We have legitimate cause for anger about that. We have problems, and we should all have our say as we face many tough decisions going forward. Fortunately my husband has realized that, which is why you already have more of a voice in how things are run here. And you’ll have even more robust representation after Tuesday’s election. That’s why the best thing you can do to air your concerns is come to the open council session on Monday afternoon.”
As she addressed her audience, Caroline looked from face to face, trying to make eye contact with as many individuals as she could. Many were listening to what she said. But some weren’t, and then when she paused, they started shouting. Shrieking for the director to come out and speak.
She shook her head. “I’m afraid my husband is ill and unable to talk with you today.” Or unwilling. “He can’t even participate right now in the decisions we have to make, so if you have something to say, it should be to me and the other councilors. We want to hear your concerns and suggestions. And we can and will act in your interests. I know I’m eager to do all I can for you, whether it’s as a council member or as the leader for our community, if you do honor me with that privilege.
“The deputy director, Ms. Belue, is the one who is currently in charge of the administration, and I’m sure she’d welcome hearing from you as well.” Maybe now some of these people would head over to the Admin building. Or at least drift a block over to the Belue house, where Verity was welcome to try using her cool logic to sway them.
Appeals to reason weren’t Caroline’s forte. Her husband and his deputy might like that approach—Caroline connected to people on an emotional level and found it much more effective in reaching them. So she continued to talk to the crowd, throwing herself into the role and using every technique she had learned, tugging at their heartstrings. She knew the difficulties they faced and understood the pain they felt. She sympathized.
Didn’t she have friends and relatives across the country that she worried about? Wasn’t her daughter risking her life trying to protect the community, and did she not suffer the anxiety of that? Surely all of them who were parents worried about what kind of future their children would have. So did she.
“We’re all in this together, and we need to know what’s going on. Whatever our differences, we have to try and work together to get through these crises, and every one that comes after, if we want to build a better future for our families. We can’t give up.”
More and more people had drifted in as she had been talking. Either word had gotten out, or people passing by had been drawn to the attraction—which should have pleased her, but she found herself having a harder and harder time holding their attention against the competition among the growing throng. They weren’t a mob, and they weren’t trying to shut her down. But many belligerently argued with their neighbors in the crowd, and fewer were actually listening to her. She was losing them.
Caroline could feel the passions in her audience rising, knew tempers could easily flare, and guessed things could get out of hand quickly. They could become violent if the least little thing set them off. She hoped Kat had called Security.
Wondering if the time hadn’t come to make her way back into the house—a strategic withdrawal she would have to play just right—she scanned through the multitude trying to estimate how many were actually watching her. Then she saw a shadow shift in the distance. Somebody nearly invisible against the darkened house across the way was watching. She knew who it had to be.
It would be nice if she could think he was there for her sake, but she knew better. He was here for her daughter. Still, Tony’s presence did give Caroline fresh confidence. While the daylight was waning, and she was only reaching a handful of people now, as long as she could convince one more, she’d not give up. If there were any trouble, she’d have to trust Tony could get her out of it.
Chapter 17
The Gravity Bug
8:20 p.m. Saturday, May 24th
DAVID walked down the sterile clinic corridors as he turned all he had learned over in his mind. There was still too much he didn’t understand, though, to put the pieces together—but one thing he felt sure of was that his mother was mixed up in it all. While he had considered confronting her about it, he’d decided to wait until he knew more about what was going on. Besides, he wasn’t just a kid butting in where he had no business this time—he was a security officer on a job. So he needed to report his findings before he did anything else.
Chief Nelson hadn’t said who between Michelle and David was in charge, or even that they were true partners. They’d both been transferred individually to work under Dr. Harker’s supervision, and David supposed that meant Amita was the one who should hear what he’d found out first—she was also the one who’d asked him to look into these things.
The door to her office stood wide open, and the room was flooded with light. On the threshold, David paused and watched for a moment—she nibbled absently on a hunk of cheese as she scrolled through something on her workpad with her head bent over her desk. From the bags under her eyes, he suspected she hadn’t been getting enough sleep. That hunk of cheese was probably the only supper she’d bother to eat, too, if he didn’t do something. Someone had to make sure she took better care of herself.
He knocked softly on the metal door and waited for his presence to register—whatever absorbed her attention so completely was probably too important for him to risk breaking her train of thought. When this whole flu business was finished maybe he could convince her to take a day off. Or two.
After several long minutes Amita finally looked up and saw him. Her frown turned to a smile at the sight of him, but the determined light in her eyes remained. “You’re having an awfully long day, aren’t you?”
“You’re one to speak, Amita. But I had work to do, and now I’ve got a report to make. Why don’t we take a break for dinner? I can talk to you while you eat.”
Glancing at the piece of cheese in her hand, she shook her head. “I’ve got my dinner, but I certainly can listen to you while I finish it.” She pushed away her workpad and leaned back in her chair. “Did you find something?” She bit off a big chunk of cheddar and waited.
David cleared his throat. “First, I did locate the sister who gave Chief Nelson and me checkups Sunday afternoon. She knew another sister who’d been assigned to perform similar work that day. Between them they gave checkups to all twenty of the original flu victims, including the director.”
“That’s certainly no coincidence.”
“No. I got samples of their blood, just in case—but there’s still the fact that they don’t seem to have spread the virus to any of their coworkers, so I don’t see how they could be carriers. As far as why they’d given the checkups in the first place, both sisters say the instructions were there on their workpads. And they performed the duties that were listed for them to do. Only that.”
Dr. Harker shook her head. “Even though there is no record? At least, none remains. Do you believe them, David?”
He nodded. “They’re both nice young people. I think I’d have sensed something if they were trying to be evasive. And it d
oes look like the logs might’ve been tampered with.”
Amita leaned forward, once again forgetting the cheese in her hand. “You discovered what this mysterious lab test they’ve been running is?”
David had to shake his head. “No. Ben scoured the FURCSnet for traces for me, but although there was evidence to show that someone had been in and erased things, there was no way to recover what had been there.”
“Isn’t this Ben one of the few people who might have been responsible in the first place? I’m sure I remember you saying so.”
“He sure is, but I questioned him before anyone else. He said he didn’t know anything about it, and I believed him. And since he knows his way around the FURCSnet better than anybody, I got his help to find out what’s been going on.”
She leaned back in her chair again. “But you say he didn’t find anything?” Finding the final chunk of cheese in her hand, she popped it in her mouth.
“For the most part. There was no trace of whatever alterations somebody had made to the records or who’d done it. But at least he could find changes had been made, and that it had to have been somebody with administrative access.” David was sure it had been his mother, but there was no proof—which was part of why he was confident it had been her.
Dr. Harker sat up straight and squinted at him. “You just said ‘for the most part’—did you find anything that hadn’t been erased?”
David smiled. She was really smart, and he appreciated that. “Whoever did all this left a live feed sending data on the test results from the blood panels, and the charts of all the flu patients, to a FURCS pad. And Ben was able to trace where that information has been going—to the workpad of a Dr. Cummings in medical research.”
“Dr. Cummings?”
“You know him?”
Amita nodded. “By reputation, at least. He was a virologist with the CDC before coming here. I had hoped to get his help with this outbreak, but I hadn’t been able to find him, or get in touch at all. I wondered if he were one of those who never returned.”
“He certainly could be.” While most of the residents who had been outside the compound when it was sealed had been brought back inside, those had all been waiting close by. But David had heard that quite a few had been on trips far from the FURC and never made it back. “But his workpad must be here at least, and someone is using it to monitor patients. Whoever it is, I think they’ll have the answers we’re looking for.”
“But how do we find them? I haven’t been able to find Dr. Cummings, and I wouldn’t begin to know how to find some stranger we can’t even put a name to.”
David shook his head at her. As much as Amita knew about medicine, she was shockingly lacking in some areas. “We don’t have to find anyone. We just have to find the workpad. I already pinged its location, and fifteen minutes ago it was in one of the labs on the fourth floor.”
She nodded, more to herself than to him. “That would be where Dr. Cummings does his research—a lot of the sensitive stuff is conducted up there.” She sprang to her feet. “Let’s go.”
Taken a bit aback, he made room for her as she went for the door. “But it’s after eight on a Saturday night. Whether it’s Dr. Cummings or someone else, they’re not likely to be in.”
Pausing at the door, Amita cocked her head. “I was working, and I imagine I’m not the only one.”
“Maybe not, but I doubt there are many others. What will you do if there’s no one there?”
“You’re with Security, aren’t you? You can open even secured locks, can’t you? The workpad you referred to must be there, and that should have something that will tell us what we need to know.”
David hesitated. He really wasn’t sure if it was proper to use his security access in that way. “There are locks I don’t have the authority to open. And the workpad might be encrypted, and I’m no hacker.”
She shrugged. “We’ll see what we find when we get there. It can’t hurt to go take a look.” She talked over her shoulder as he followed her down the hallway to the elevator. “If those sisters aren’t carriers, and I don’t see how they could be, and if they didn’t know they were doing anything they shouldn’t, then the purpose of those checkups must’ve been monitoring you twenty. That means you must have been infected before that.”
“But I was feeling fine. And Chief Nelson and I both got clean bills of health from those nurses. Yet a few hours later all of those twenty except me were showing symptoms. If those sisters weren’t in on it, did they miss something?”
“I don’t know, David, I’ll have to re-examine the notes they made—if they still exist.” Pushing the up call button, she turned and stared at him. “It’s starting to all make sense. I think you were deliberately infected, the twenty of you. I’ve been studying that original virus, and it’s not really a new strain of the flu—it’s a familiar old strain that’s been modified.”
“Modified? Do you mean some kind of genetic engineering? To make the virus more contagious? More deadly?”
“No, that’s what doesn’t make any sense. Someone took a mild strain of the flu and altered the antigens on its surface, leaving the actual virus the same mild strain as it had been.”
David shook his head. “Why would anybody do that? What difference would it make?”
The elevator dinged and the doors opened, and he leaned in and looked around to make sure it was clear before he waved Amita inside the car. Following her in, he took his FURCS pad out and plugged it into the panel to allow them access to stop on the upper floors.
Pushing the button to go to the fourth floor herself, Amita answered his question. “All it would do would keep the immune system from recognizing it. This is a mild strain most people would’ve been exposed to and already have the ability to fight. With the altered antigens though, anyone infected by this modified virus wouldn’t automatically start producing the right antibodies—their system would have to learn how to generate new antibodies. What would be the point of that? It’s still only a mild strain that wouldn’t do a lot of damage.”
“And you’re sure no one could’ve foreseen what happened to the virus in me?”
“I don’t see how, but there’s still so much I can’t make sense of, I wouldn’t want to say I’m sure about anything. But messing around modifying any virus is dangerous business no one should be engaged in. Nobody could be certain of the consequences.”
“So the mutation might’ve been nothing but an unanticipated result?”
Dr. Harker nodded as the car quivered to a halt at the fourth floor and the doors slid open. “It’s one possibility. Though even with the apparent changes that were made, it’s still difficult to believe it underwent an antigenic shift like that.”
David followed her down the empty corridors to a wide metal door with a plastic sign that said it was room 411 and a security reader installed just above the knob. First he checked the location of the workpad by pinging it again. This was the place. Then he linked his pad to the reader. “Yes, I can override the lock. But I can’t hide what we’re doing—it will show up on the FURCSnet logs.”
“And who will look at those?”
Ben would probably notice right away, but considering Laskey had just provided David this information less than half an hour ago, it wouldn’t come as a surprise. What worried David was the possibility that his mom or the director would be alerted to an intrusion. “I’m not sure who, or when they might notice. But we might get in trouble.”
Amita shrugged. “I’m doing my job, as are you. We shouldn’t worry about what someone might say about it later.”
He couldn’t think of it that lightly, but he ought to be able to do whatever the investigation demanded. And right now, it seemed to say they needed to get past this door.
David overrode the lock and turned the knob to ease the door open slowly and silently, not knowing what they might find. The lights in the lab were on, and looking in around the edge of the door, he spied a muscular man with greying brown hai
r and wearing a lab coat bent over and gazing down into a microscope. He moved out of the way to let Amita get a good look at the man. Hoping she knew what Dr. Cummings looked like, he whispered in her ear. “Is that him?”
She nodded, and he pushed the door all the way open so she could precede him into that bright, sterile space. After all, he really had no idea what to say to the man, and she clearly did. She had walked between the tables to stand opposite, with him on her right and behind her, when the door shut with a soft metallic click.
At the sound, Dr. Cummings looked up sharply to see Amita on the other side of the table the microscope sat on, standing there, looming with her arms folded across her chest. Though he was clearly surprised, he didn’t ask who they were or how they had gotten in. What he did was snort. “I rather expected you to discover what was going on, Dr. Harker—though I never imagined I’d see you popping up out of nowhere like this.”
She stretched her lips wide. “I tried calling, but you’re a hard man to get ahold of.”
He nodded in acknowledgement, then looked at David. “Who’s your young friend?”
Amita answered, since it was her he had asked. “Officer Belue is with Security and the deputy director’s son.”
Dr. Cummings narrowed his eyes. “I see.” Then he turned back to Dr. Harker. “I suppose it’s alright to talk about this with him here, then. I’m sure you must have questions.”
“Let’s start with the central one. For what purpose did you genetically modify a mild strain of Orthomyxoviridae?”
David didn’t think that was the most important question, and he interrupted with his own. “I’d like to know how you infected people with this virus and how you chose them—and on what authority?”
The doctor glanced bitterly at David but turned his attention to Amita. “I’ve been working on this at the behest of Director Miles, because he knew about my background and thought I could help.” And that meant David’s mother knew all about it, was in it up to her chin.
Starting the Slowpocalypse (Books 1-3 Omnibus) Page 59
