Anthony frowned. She was right, of course—he had been testing her—now he was testing himself as he talked with her. Just being around her was difficult, but they needed her help. As soon as this crisis was over though, she would go back to the Guards—surely he could control himself that long.
Peering at him in the dark, she had to be able to see the frown on his face. She shook her head. “You were the one who sent me out patrolling on my own. If you weren’t sure I was up to the job, why not partner me with someone? That would have been easier than following me and watching from the shadows.”
“I told you I was out on patrol. I heard that you were responding to this situation, and I thought I’d see for myself how you were doing.” He’d also given her a reason for them to work separately—the two of them covered more ground that way. And neither of them really needed a partner. “And I’m glad I came by and saw. You went too easy on those guys—a few scrapes and bruises might teach them a much needed lesson. Catching the flu certainly won’t do it.”
It might take them out of action for a while, but everyone would have to catch this flu sooner or later now that they knew it did what it was supposed to—it had just turned out to be a bit rougher going than they’d intended. Hopefully once the election was in the past, and as the flu cut a wider swath across the community, things would quiet down. Some.
Kat squinted at him. “I’ve been training hard a couple of months now, just so I can deal with delinquents like these while doing less damage. And you refused to help me with that. Even though learning to not harm anyone any more than you have to was supposed to be your philosophy.”
Anthony had been avoiding her, but not for that reason. He did want her skills to improve. And she knew that, so why was she throwing this at him? “I wasn’t complaining about a lack of excessive force—though you are making too much of an effort in the other direction—but I’m wondering why you would bend over backwards to be so gentle.”
“Shouldn’t I be?”
“After what you went through—” Between very nearly dying herself, and having had to leave dozens of bodies in her wake, it had to have been traumatic for her. Then, just when he’d needed to be there for her, he’d had to start keeping his distance. “Is this how you’re dealing with all the killing you’ve done?” He spoke harshly on purpose, because he needed to know.
She flinched at his words, then shook her head. “You don’t understand. With those white supremacists it was kill or be killed—I thought I was dead at one point—and I’m not bothered by what I did. And Sgt. Rossiter was going to kill that kid. I had to stop him, whatever it took, and I’m glad I did.”
Anthony didn’t believe she could really shrug it off that easily, but there was something more. “Why have you been pushing yourself so hard then?”
Shaking her head, Kat snorted. “I can do better. I want to get so good I never need to kill. Not again, not anyone.”
He sighed. It was admirable, but it wasn’t realistic. “I do understand. But you’ll never be so good that you can have that kind of control over circumstances.” With more experience she’d come to realize how little influence any of them really had, even over the consequences of their own actions. “Work to be your best, yes, but don’t worry about the rest.”
“You should put that on a t-shirt.”
Looking over her shoulder he saw the kids continuing to rock back and forth on the grass, trying to get to their feet so they could run away no doubt. “I know you have a good heart, Kat, and good training. So trust your instincts and you won’t end up hurting anyone any more than necessary.”
“Tell that to Stan.”
“Stan?” For a moment Anthony drew a blank—he really was getting old—and then he remembered. “He was a traitor trying to break the lock on the security gate. He did break it, Kat, and he would’ve let our enemies roll right in and take over.”
She shook her head. “He was just a kid—a student like me, and I shot him for no good reason. He couldn’t have done any harm, whatever I thought at the time. Because none of it was true. So his death was completely pointless.”
Anthony shook his head back at her. “And that’s my fault, not yours. If I had told you everything—”
“Can’t you see that doesn’t matter? It’s not like I was able to prevent him breaking the lock anyway. But if I’d been good enough, maybe I could’ve done something different, tried some other way.”
It was Anthony’s responsibility. His and Miles’ culpability, because they had kept too many secrets from too many people—and still were. Nobody had yet told Kat that she’d been infected by this Gravity Bug. Or cured, they hoped, by Dr. Cummings’ virus. “As far as you knew, Stan was an imminent threat to the whole community, and you took the only action available at the time. Your intentions were pure.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better about it.”
He could see the hurt in her eyes and longed to hold her, comfort her, but he couldn’t. Not when he knew where that would lead. “Time will put it all in perspective. And in the meantime, just don’t try so hard to avoid hurting someone, or you’ll end up getting yourself hurt.” Or killed.
Kat stepped back and away from him. “Thanks for the advice, Tony.”
He sighed, knowing there was nothing more he could do. Or should do, rather. And before he could consider what he might do, his FURCS pad began to vibrate in his pocket.
Checking the screen, he saw Hope had sent out a new alert. “Trouble outside the Community Hall. Since Salazar and Gabe have the big cart, why don’t I bring them here to pick up your packages, and you can run over to the hall to handle things there? Susan’s just going off duty, but I can send Sara over to give you a hand.”
Her eyes bored into his, accusing. “What about you? Where are you going?”
He was running away. He’d already spent more time than he should’ve this close to her. “Hope has been working late. So I’m going back to relieve her and run things from the office for a while.” Turning to go, he called back over his shoulder. “Make it an early night, Kat. I want you rested and ready in case there’s trouble tomorrow morning when the results come in.” He expected trouble, as always. He didn’t know where or when it would come though.
Skimming across the ground through the shadows, Anthony left Kat behind. He hated to do it, but clearly he had to keep her at arm’s length still. Maybe he always would.
In just a few minutes he’d skirted the Green and made it to the main doors at Security headquarters. Hope sat behind the duty desk, tired but smiling. “I don’t mean to sound like a grouch, Chief, when you just came through the door, but would it be possible for me to head home now?”
She buzzed him through, and Anthony breezed through the gate and lifted her off the chair. “Yes, I insist on it even. Go get some sleep, and make sure you don’t forget to vote in the morning.”
“The FURCSnet wouldn’t let me if I wanted to.”
That reminded him of Ben. “Wait. Is Ben here somewhere?” Of course the boy would still be hard at work.
Hope nodded. “Up in the Resource Room, and only coming down for snacks.”
“Sounds like he needs a break. And you need an escort back to the dorms. Stay right here while I go and send him down to you—then you can both walk back together.”
She settled back into her chair with a sigh. And Anthony glided down the hall and up the stairs and used his security key to walk in on Ben. The boy was bent over his workpad, absorbed in his work.
Before Anthony could say anything, Ben looked up. “I have a confession to make, Chief Nelson.”
Anthony’s thoughts leapt to the recent question concerning the integrity of the election, but then he relaxed. He didn’t have to worry about Ben, not like that. “What is it?”
“Officer Belue came to me a few days back, and he asked me to look into some problems in the clinic records.” Ben quickly detailed what the issue had been and what he had found, in clear, easy to und
erstand English. By now he knew that’s what Anthony wanted. “I shared what I learned with David, but is that alright?”
Anthony nodded. Though it was a little late for Ben to ask that question now. “Next time, I’d appreciate it if you checked with me first, since you never know what you might be getting into. But this time it was no big deal.” He’d already heard from Verity, who’d gotten an earful from Dr. Harker. And it had not been difficult to guess where the doctor had gotten some of her information.
Ben looked relieved. “Thank you, sir. I’ll try to remember, about next time.”
“Do that. Right now you’ve been working overtime preparing everything for this election, and you have a busy morning ahead of you. So I’d like you to go home and get some rest. And Hope is waiting in the lobby for you to escort her home.”
The boy pointed at a sleeping bag stuffed in the corner. “I’d planned on just sleeping here tonight.”
Anthony grinned. “To guard the node? You’ve even got your service weapon with you, I see. Even if you have to give your life to protect the FURCSnet I’m sure you’ll do your duty.”
He paused for a laugh, but when Ben didn’t give him even a chuckle, Anthony continued. “Though I know that won’t be necessary. I’ll be watching over everything here tonight. And I’ll come get you early in the morning myself, to bring you back.” Anthony wasn’t worried about an attack on the node, though he was worried about Ben. Using this boy would be the only way anyone could tamper with the election—so Ben would be protected. “And tomorrow, lock yourself in and monitor everything from here. And don’t let anybody in. And I do mean anybody.”
Ben saluted. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, what are you waiting for? Hope is down there, delaying her own departure for you to see her home.”
Nodding, the boy grabbed his jacket and rushed out of the room. Anthony followed him downstairs and headed to his office as the two kids waltzed out the main doors into the night. He hoped they would both get the rest he’d recommended.
He could use some sleep himself, but he needed to be available, so he couldn’t retire to his rooms for a proper lie-down. But he could stretch out here on the sofa in his office, ready to respond when another alert came. It would, and soon. But he should have opportunities for the occasional catnap. Thankfully he didn’t think he’d have time to dream.
Chapter 21
Unexpected Reactions
7:40 a.m. Tuesday, May 27th
DAVID walked into Amita’s office bearing bad tidings. “A bunch of protesters have started gathering outside the clinic’s main entrance. Now that Director Miles isn’t here anymore, they’ve found out he is here. Or rather that he was, and they don’t know he isn’t anymore, and I don’t think there’s any use telling them. They wouldn’t believe it.”
She looked up from her workpad to stare at him with an air of distraction, like she wasn’t really seeing him or hearing what he had said. “Well, we can pray they don’t turn ugly, but if they do, at least you and Michelle are here and armed. And you can call Chief Nelson if you need more help.”
Sighing as he sat down in front of her desk, David shook his head. “The chief and most of Security are over at the Community Hall for when they start reporting the election returns, and they’ll stay there through the swearing in. I doubt he would spare us anyone if he could, which he may not be able to. So I’d rather not bother him until we’re out of options.” Better if they could find a way to deal with the problem without asking for help.
She set down her workpad and smiled at him. “I trust you to know when and if to make that call, so I won’t worry about it. I’ve got enough trouble on my mind without that.”
David groaned. “More bad news? I thought we had confirmed Dr. Cummings’ cure was working.”
“The cure does seem to be killing off the Gravity Bug parasite, at least indirectly, but it’s not because of Cummings’ Frankenstein virus—it’s this mutated strain caused by the antigenic shift that occurred in you that’s having the effect we were hoping for. But how it’s doing it is very peculiar.”
“Peculiar? Is that a technical term?”
She cocked her head at him. “In this case, peculiar is a mild word. Although there’s no trace of the parasite in Lt. Miles’ blood or yours, and no unusually high level of stress hormones—and your bodies have been producing the right kind of immunoglobulin to attack this Gravity Bug—it doesn’t appear to be because your bodies mistakenly think it’s the flu they’re fighting. What I’ve found in the blood of you two, and the others who were infected and have now recovered from the flu, is a new kind of lymphocyte. It seems to recognize the parasite for the pathogen it is and respond accordingly.”
David blinked for a moment as he processed the technical language. “You’re saying that, rather than tricking my system into producing the right kind of antibody to fight the Gravity Bug, the flu tricked my body into producing a new kind of lymphocyte that then made the right antibodies?”
“No, David. At least, the human body shouldn’t be able to build a brand new model of lymphocyte—not according to what we thought we knew. When I examined the section of your genetic code responsible for your immune system, comparing your genes from samples we took initially with those after you’d recovered, I found a significant and specific change to those codons. And I presume I’ll find similar results when I have time to map out the others.”
“I’m not sure I understand. Do you mean to say the flu virus altered my DNA?”
Dr. Harker looked unsure, not an expression he was used to seeing. “It’s true that viruses and radiation can cause mutations by altering the nucleotides of DNA inside a cell, but those are corruptions more or less chaotic in nature. Random. Those errors are then replicated when new proteins are synthesized. But this doesn’t look like that. The alterations were too precise for that to be how they happened. So I went ahead and sequenced your entire genome.”
David smiled. “I’m sure you only did what you had to, but talk slow so I can keep up.”
“Massive modifications have been made to your DNA, but—” She paused and squinted and blinked. Explaining it so he could understand had to be difficult for her. “Most of the segments of human DNA are what we used to call junk DNA—as they seemed to contain no information. At least, they didn’t have the instructions for protein synthesis, so we thought they had to be useless. Then we discovered that the ‘useless’ data was some sort of elaborate redundancy to preserve the essential information in our DNA so replication could continue properly, without a lot of transcription errors. So you stay you.”
“Like backup files?”
“Something like that. Only we never have been able to understand how that redundancy system actually worked. Now I have to believe there’s more to it than that. While the coding of your introns, those ‘junk’ segments of your DNA, has been radically altered, the only change I found to your codons, what we think of as your actual genes, was this one specific transformation to your immune system. And I’m not sure what to make of that.”
David didn’t like that his DNA might have been rewritten wholesale that way. “You’re sure it didn’t have any other side effects aside from creating this new kind of lymphocyte? I am still human?”
She shrugged. “What makes us human? As for whether or not we know the extent of these changes in you, much less the others, I’m not willing to even guess until I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot more research. But based on how quickly and completely you and Lt. Miles recovered from the flu and the apparent elimination of the parasite from your bodies, wouldn’t you say that at least the changes we know about to your immune system have been positive?”
He couldn’t help but grunt. “You make it sound like some kind of upgrade.”
Amita leaned back in her chair with a sigh. “It’s one way to think about it, but there’s still too much I have to do—starting with a comparison between the changes in your DNA and Lt. Miles’. How many others who r
ecover from the flu will have similar alterations in their genetic code? If not, will their systems still be producing the antibodies that attack the parasite? So far all those tested seem to be free, but it’s still too early to celebrate.”
“Especially since so many more people are now fighting the flu itself.”
“And we need to concentrate on trying to make sure they all pull through first, before we begin worrying about everything else. We can wait to study all that’s happened until after we see that everyone has survived the flu.”
They were sitting there, staring at each other as David digested all Amita had been explaining, when Michelle came running into the room. “The protesters outside, they tried to force their way in. One of the nurses helped me close and lock the main doors, and some of the sisters are going around now to secure the rest of the building, but that mob has started trying to break down the doors, and I don’t know how long they can hold.” She took a big breath and turned to David. “I’ve got my weapon, but I haven’t had to use it to shoot anyone before. You have. Do we make a stand? Shoot them as they come in?”
He would rather not have been reminded about having shot someone, even a person as mean as Eric had been. “I don’t know. We should try to prevent them from getting in, maybe keep it from coming to that. These people are part of our community—and anyway, we don’t know how much of their behavior is due to the influence of this parasite. There has to be a better way than shooting them.”
Michelle nodded. “Maybe you should call Chief Nelson and ask for reinforcements.”
Why should it be him who called? She could do that just as easily as he. He shook his head. “Chief Nelson is too busy. And I have a better idea.”
David had learned the hard way to go ahead and ask for help when he needed it, which they certainly did now. But he didn’t have to bother his boss. His old boss could come to the rescue this time. Pulling out his FURCS pad, he called Ken.
Starting the Slowpocalypse (Books 1-3 Omnibus) Page 62
