Montcliffe took a step forward, now raising the barrel of his rifle to point dead at her face. "Look around you, Princess," he said. "You're lucky to be alive."
Anna took a step closer, looking down the barrel. It wasn't her first time. "So are you. I could have let him kill you all. I didn't."
He didn't like that. He took a step closer still, and Anna saw the glint of wet blood on the haft, and realized he'd been beating them only moments ago. Until the moment they'd seen her walking across the field of the dead, they'd been beating them.
She looked round at the other four, hard men and women who were fanning out now. They were slightly out of breath; torture had tired them out. The strangely calm thought came that, if she was a different person, in a different place, she might be afraid.
All she felt now was contempt.
"Do you honestly think this is going to help?" she asked. "Do you think it'll bring the line back, help you with your shield, achieve anything at all? Those people are my team and I need them to save you! You idiots."
"So join them," said Montcliffe. "I'll take my chances without your team."
Anna laughed. "And did they give you much useful information?" The first of the four were behind her now, and she let them. They were really doing this. "Insights on the T4, perhaps? Thoughts on portable shields? Tell me at least you got some tears along with the blood, some apologies?" She was working herself up now. "I'm sure that made you feel better."
"Not enough," Montcliffe said, and she just wanted to laugh more; that he was angry, that he'd decided to turn that anger on her, that he thought he was doing the right thing to keep his people safe. That he also enjoyed it. "It's never enough with you people."
He nodded, and a sharp movement came from behind Anna. The trap was sprung.
She was too drained to fight, and outrage wasn't going to shield her. She imagined the blow landing, a rifle butt to the back of the head, knocking her down and making their point. Probably they'd make the same point multiple times, to ensure she really understood. Maybe they'd make the point so many times there'd be nothing of her or people left to explain it to.
And who would care? Not Inchcombe, not really, it was tidying up an awkward mess. Montcliffe wouldn't be here if she'd had the power or inclination to stop him. Not any of the people she'd saved would care. Her death would be invisible and forgotten.
And that she couldn't accept.
She hadn't seen the possibility before, but now it appeared as clear as day in her head; the mosquito buzzing madly, waiting to be used. Amo had taught her strange things in her long pursuit, tracking his black storm through the craters of Gap and Brezno, and now there was this.
Before the blow could land she plucked the buzzing mosquito hard, so it twanged like a thick elastic band inside her skull.
BBRRAAAAAAANNNGGG
And the blow coming at the back of her head didn't land. Instead, her enemies simply dropped.
There was a clatter of weapons and a thudding sigh of bodies. It happened in an instant, and it struck her too, but she didn't drop. A wave washed away from her on the empty line, rippling over dry sand. It burned out quickly, swallowed by the friction of so many bodies on the runway, pouring its effect into them so they one by one gasped and stiffened.
Anna coughed and lurched a step back. The floor reeled as though she were on the deck of her catamaran on a rocking ocean, shifting fluidly underfoot. The world inside her head wobbled as reality bent back to normal.
What the hell?
She rubbed her eyes and bowed over until things stabilized, then looked up and saw the five soldiers lying around her, struggling to rise. Montcliffe was on his hands and knees, fumbling for his rifle, his eyes blazing.
Anna swayed in and took his weapon from him. The sky wobbled like a funhouse mirror and she almost fell, but leaned on the rifle like a crutch. It was tacky with blood.
"Up," she said, out of breath herself. "Up and go. Go!"
He met her order with a gaze of naked hate. He didn't understand, but this only confirmed what he'd already known. But he wasn't a fool either. This was something new, and he didn't know how to fight it. He rose up and lurched sideways, like a drunk. He didn't wait for the others, who followed moments later. Two of them left their rifles, but Anna didn't collect them. She didn't need to.
Instead she turned inward. The mystery of this new power could wait. Shaking, she strode into the darkness of the hangar, where her people lay naked, bloody and bound.
* * *
Peters was strung amateurishly by the wrists, barely holding up his own weight. In the darkness it was hard to see the extent of his injuries, but the pain rising off him only grew stronger as she tuned in to it.
"Easy," he whispered, as she cut his bonds and guided him down to lie on the dusty hangar floor. "Anna. Go easy."
He had a clotted wound on his shoulder from where they'd shot at him, and impact bruises all over his torso and thighs. She had no blanket, and had to lie him down on the bare concrete. Tears sprang in her eyes. "I'll be back," she said, clutching his thin shoulder. "I'll help."
"Find Jake," Peters mumbled, laying his head down and trembling. "He needs..."
"Jake?" Anna asked, shaking his shoulder gently, but Peters drifted into unconsciousness.
Jake. She'd thought he was dead too, lost in the helicopter attack north of Bordeaux, but if he was alive, if he was here…
She sped on. Here was Macy, bent over her crate and barely conscious. Anna only hoped they hadn't raped her. Once untied she curled into a chilly ball radiating hurt. Nearby was Jonathan, laid on the floor and stretched between two sets of landing gear with taut ropes. She cut him free and he started crawling toward Macy, exuding a new feeling beyond the pain, perhaps love, perhaps the urge to protect.
"Where's Jake?" she asked him, but he only shook his head and crawled.
She found Sulman slumped in his chair, his arms tied to the rests, soaked with sweat and blood, his mouth covered with silver duct tape. A baseball bat lay at his feet.
"They took Jake," he mumbled through swollen lips, after she tore the tape away. "There."
Anna spun to the depths of the hangar, where the moonlight didn't reach, and felt them in the shadows on the empty line; two balls of the deepest, rawest hurt. One of them was Jake.
She ran, stumbling off a wooden table in the dark, thumping her shoulder on a heavy hanging hook, until behind a stack of large crates she heard a mumbling, and saw two shapes in the darkness, one laid on the floor and one tied to a crate. She ran full pelt through the dark, whipped by the pain.
"Don't," called the figure at the crates as she came on. "Don't touch him!"
It was Lucas, and Anna turned to him. In the deep dark he was barely visible, but the feel of him on the empty line was familiar; unique, cured, not like anyone else. The slumped shape of Jake felt the same, which puzzled her. Had he taken the cure?
She halted between them, uncertain what to do. "What's happened?"
"He has Lyell's," Lucas said, each word coming with a wet grunt of effort. "No skin left. You can't touch him. You'll only-"
Anna whirled to the lump of Jake, where he lay huddled on the floor, now making a high-pitched whine. He was an inferno of pain.
Lyell's? Anna thought back to her skinless man in the Alps, wearing his thick wet white pads, serving as a second skin. That was Lyell's, but that wasn't possible, not here, not to Jake…
"What did they, I mean-"
"They infected him to punish me, to make me work for them." Lucas stopped to spit blood. "Now they pulled his wrappings off. It's agony, Anna. Get me up. We'll go down. We need to get more." He tried to stand but sagged, even when Anna moved to help him. "I can't…" he started to cry. "Anna, they pulled him to pieces."
Anna stood for a second, torn and terrified. The blare of Jake's pain was interrupting her thinking. She couldn't process all the changes, coming so fast; Jake was alive, Jake had the cure, Jake didn't have any skin left. The
urgency of his pain cut right into her brain.
No skin?
"Help him, Anna," Lucas said pathetically. He tried to push himself to his feet again, but now collapsed forward, striking his forehead hard. Fresh tears of helplessness welled in his eyes, while the horror held her fast. It was too much.
Then she was halfway back through the darkness of the hangar, forgetting how drained she was, because it didn't matter anymore. The mosquito buzz filled her body, making her strong. Her lungs didn't catch on every breath, her stride was no longer weak and staggered, but bold and intent.
She burst from the dark hell of the hangar and sprinted across the open runway, bodies parting sideways like the Red Sea as she sped toward the Command buildings, driven by the buzz of the mosquito within. She flew past the bunker's hangar entrance where the bodies were thickest, her feet striking off shoulders and thighs but none stopping her.
In moments she raced into the electric light around the field hospital outside Hangar 11, where new faces looked up at her in confusion and fear. They didn't know her. She looked around desperately, seeking someone to help.
Many were tending to wounds already, knelt by bodies on white sheets, applying dressings, setting up drips, administering medicines. In their midst, on his knees and pausing in the act of mid-vomit, she saw the leader of the five who'd beaten her people, Montcliffe, staring at her with surprise on his face.
"She's here," he said, reaching for his gun. "Here!"
Anna let the fizz of her rage swell out and wash over him and them all. This was what Amo had done, and now she could do it too. They'd hurt her, they'd hurt her people, and this was the right thing to do.
But the buzz was weak, no stronger than a stiff breeze, knocking no one but Anna herself down, not strong enough to do any more than make the sick moan as it passed. On her knees before the man who'd done it, she wavered and remembered about Jake. Montcliffe stared at her, terrified and confused, not knowing what would happen next.
She held up one hand, pointed her fingers at his forehead as if they were the barrel of a gun, and forced words up through her tightening throat. "Get doctors. Supplies. Do it right now."
Montcliffe's jaw dropped. He looked around as if somebody might save him. "I don't-"
Anna stabbed her fingers forward, poking him sharply in the forehead. "Do it. Now."
He stared, then started nodding. He kept nodding as he looked around, patting a man nearby on the hip, then the woman who'd been helping him, then two of his own team lying down beside him.
"Wrappings," Anna said, drifting on a cloud of weariness now, no longer sure who she was speaking to, not sure what she was even seeing or thinking. Was any of this even real? "He has Lyell's. Anesthetic. He's dying."
Then a new person was there, a woman doctor with a firm voice and a clear sense of command, looking into Anna's eyes, holding her by the cheeks. "How far along is he?"
Anna stared at her blankly for a moment.
"The Lyell's, what stage is he?"
"Far," Anna blurted, and let out a sob. "They skinned him in Hangar 13. He's lying on the floor, only whining."
The woman nodded, her calm professionalism taking control. "Jaw locked. I've seen it, late stage." She looked at Anna's hand, still frozen in the shape of a gun against Montcliffe's head. "And you can put that away."
It could have been a comical thing to say, but to Anna there was nothing funny about it. It was surrender, but she didn't think she had the strength left to hold her hand up any way.
She let her hand drop, and with it let go of the rage. At once she collapsed in on herself, tumbling to the side.
"Shit," said the woman, catching Anna. She ran a hand up to her temple. "Dammit, she's on fire." She looked around. "Keller, I need you on this girl stat, she's hyperthermic. Ice and plasma before she bakes herself alive." She ripped off Anna's jacket, shirt, and Anna let her. A trickle of cool crept in, as the woman stood and kept firing off commands, stabbing her finger out at them.
"Myers and Faircroft, you're with me. We have another Lyell's victim in Hangar 13, get three boxes synthetic tissue, two bags Oxycodone, on me, and go!"
Anna rolled on the floor as someone stripped her, and washed her burning skin with cold wet towels, and laid ice on her forehead. More hands took her pulse in a blur and stripped off her boots and socks, feeding a needle into her arm while someone else held her hand.
Her eyes were blurred with tears and she began to sob.
"Jake," she tried to say, though it came out garbled. "Help me!"
"They've gone, they'll help your friend," a kind man's voice said. She barely saw the oval of his face through her tears. "It's going to be OK, I promise."
She cried even harder.
Finally they were helping her.
INTERLUDE 4
Outside the sun was rising, as the sixteen wall screens flashed to life around James While.
He took up position in the center of his open office, facing out toward the Golden Horn. Rachel Heron appeared first on screen seven beside the window, as Head of the Logchain, followed by the rest of the SEAL cabinet; the Abstract Heads of Political Quiescence, Vision, Disarmament, Unification, Economic Flow, Persuasion, the Commons, and Space; the Advancement Heads of Apotheo, Free Radical, Aum Laxar; the geographic Heads of the Americas, Eurasia, Asia Pacific and South-East Asia. Last of all came the SEAL's originator and its continuing President, Olan Harrison.
James While looked round at them, studying their faces and making mental notes, remarking the calm expression of Farthas Gurgen of Vision, the tear stains on Yalti Ibrahim Mohammed's cheeks in Quiescence, every detail a clue. Every one of these Heads, each a God or Goddess in their arena of responsibility, could have had Means, Motive and Opportunity to execute a plan of this immense scale.
"James," said Olan Harrison, calling the meeting to order. "You called this meeting. What do you have for us?"
Olan was an old man now, wizened but still alert, seated at the north of the circle. Forty years ago he'd founded the SEAL primarily to invest in new technology, raise standards of living and shepherd in a golden age for humanity. He'd been a billionaire since his teenage years, when he started and grew an early telecoms company into the modern-day backbone of global infrastructure. To say he owned the media would be an understatement. For forty years he'd laid down the cables and airwaves upon which all human communication was transmitted.
He'd hired James himself; funding the competitions that had found him, backing his investments, setting him on this track to Cabinet Chair with oversight of the entire SEAL.
"Sir," said James, and turned slowly, taking in the other Heads. Each of them showed the stress of the assault, though they masked it well. Their world was under attack and none of them had rested for a moment since the first strike that morning. "Esteemed colleagues. I'm afraid the prospects going forward are dismal."
"An amputation?" Harrison asked.
James looked at him, thinking back to the threat he'd made to Joran Helkegarde an hour earlier. To cut off one man's arm was such a small thing compared to what he had to offer now.
"Far worse than that. I believe this morning was just the first assault in an apocalypse-level campaign. Reports from the Logchain suggest a weaponized form of the T4 virus was triggered early this morning by the blast on the hydrogen line. We didn't know this bastardized form of the T4 was even out there, but early analysis suggests it's in everyone now, everywhere. It could have been spreading for months or years. The signal sent from Alpha Array simply 'triggered' it, most likely in preparation for a second strike to follow."
Surprise showed on their faces. It was the first time James had put this supposition into words, constructed from a hundred intersecting data points.
"Triggered to do what?" asked Harrison.
"I don't know that yet, sir," While answered, "though we'll have a clearer idea soon. In the last two hours reports have come in showing a handful of people around the world were thrown into c
omatose states by the signal. Some of these patients have been admitted to national facilities already, while we've swept up several ourselves, though we don't yet have total numbers. What we do know is they are already displaying preliminary symptoms of genetic type one." He gave a gesture and a hologram appeared beside him; a gray figure with bright white eyes. "Genetic type one was trapped in the T4 code, an enigma the Logchain has been working to decode for seven years. The changes thus far are minor, with a brightening of the eyes, some pallor in the skin. Rachel Heron's working hypothesis is that this signal may have functioned to ready the ground for a second one to come, in a sense 'vaccinating' the coma sufferers against a second attack."
Harrison grimaced. "That's a lot of supposition. What's the second attack?"
James nodded. "I know, Sir, but based on the capabilities we've seen to date, it fits the data. I'm projecting a strike on the hydrogen line equal to a massively infectious plague, powerful enough to wipe out human civilization entirely." He paused a moment to let that settle in. "With the T4 already out there, the Logchain postulates a widespread, near-instantaneous conversion to a number of genetic types, many as yet not decoded." A set of holograms flashed up alongside type one; first a red giant that towered over While, then a melted yellow thing, a twitching black and white creature, a wispy black wraith, a giant blue face, and more. "All the types we witnessed in the Arrays, split out like the colors in a rainbow."
The cabinet were plainly shocked. They'd seen these types in footage from the Arrays, but not so clearly as this. The types as yet decoded from the T4 were a secret kept as tightly as the SEAL was capable of.
"In anticipatory trials to date," he went on, "the Logchain has determined that all these specimens, compared to the more passive type one, are killing machines, jostling for position at the top of any predatory chain imaginable. If a second signal successfully triggers all those who remain un-vaccinated, which is the vast majority of the world, I anticipate total annihilation. What happened in the Multicameral Array will repeat itself in the wider world, without any boundaries. The human race as we know it will cease to exist."
The Lies (Zombie Ocean Book 8) Page 8
