by Nick Thacker
He blinked and sat back in the leather office chair. His daughter. It rang a second and third time, and finally waited for it to go to voicemail. He hadn’t talked to Rebecca in almost a year, and he knew he’d regret not answering it later.
The answering machine picked up. He groaned as the sound of his own voice interrupted his thoughts. “This is the voicemail box of David Livingston, Director…”
At the beep, his daughter’s voice punched through the low-quality phone speaker and into his office. “Daddy? Hey, it’s me… Just wanted to say hi. I figured you’d be working late again, but I wasn’t sure.” The voice paused for a moment. “Listen, call me back sometime. It’s been awhile.”
Another pause, then the sound of a phone hanging up. Livingston swirled a sip of scotch in his mouth and stared at the conference phone on his desk. He swirled again, swallowed, then took another deep sip.
He pressed his eyes together tightly, holding them for a moment as the burn of the low-quality scotch ran down his esophagus. “I miss you too, honey,” he said to no one. “I do miss you. It’s been nine years since we were all together, and I miss you both.”
“But she left us, remember?” He took another drink. “She walked out. After she slept with that rat-bastard from the softball team…”
He looked around, suddenly aware that he was the only one around.
He sniffed, trying to shake off the feeling of delirium caused by the whiskey. Get it together, Livingston. You’re better than this. Livingston slammed the rest of the whiskey and set the glass on the far corner of his desk.
He needed a way to keep tabs on Julie without raising a flag in the data center. He thought for a moment, then sat back up and clicked away from the picture.
The image of Julie at the park bench disappeared, replaced by a browser window. It displayed the SecuNet homepage, an intranet server with a user interface for the company’s secure communications and file storage.
He almost laughed out loud. Though SecuNet was secure enough for the CDC’s standards, he knew all too well how unsecure Internet Explorer was. It had been thoroughly proven unsafe by just about every web development and tech blog on the net, but it was the mandatory browser installed on any government computer.
The page had a few options available, and he clicked on one toward the bottom in the first column. The site redirected him to a secure page, and he typed his username and password in the respective boxes and was soon faced with a new dialog box:
“Email Redirect: Choose Orginator”
Being considered “executive” at a government organization did have its perks, even if it didn’t pay well enough. Livingston entered Julie’s email address, then added a second Originator email address entry for Benjamin Stephens. In the “Enter Forwarding Address” box, he entered his own email account and pressed “submit.”
The dialog box disappeared, and Livingston closed the browser window. The redirect would be “silent,” meaning it would run invisibly in the background — neither of his employees would know they were being tracked via email — and it would be relatively untraceable. Only a seasoned IT veteran specifically looking for the redirect would be able to find it.
He stood, refilled his scotch, and sat back down at the computer. He smiled at the computer screen and once again opened the folder containing the pictures from the company picnic.
Chapter Nineteen
DR. DIANA TORRES LOOKED THROUGH the compound microscope once more. Whatever it was, she hadn’t seen it before. The structure was different than a normal virus. First, the integumentary system that protected the rest of the microscopic body from external elements and diseases was studded with odd bumps and scrapes, as if the virus itself was infected with something. Secondly, while she recognized the lipid and protein structures that made up the bulk of the body, she couldn’t quite place their configuration.
Finally, the entire inner cavity of each individual viral body was made up of the traditional nucleocapsid and capsomeres, but also other bodies she didn’t recognize that seemed to be crammed in as well. While the overall structure was standard for a type of herpesvirus, it didn’t fit any of the eight strains modern science was aware of.
She took another measurement and checked her notes.
“Varicella Zoster strain; assumption smaller form. Standard nucleocapsid and lipid envelopes; odd protein buildup differs from traditional strains.”
“Most spherical virions 80 to 90 nm in diameter; largest observed 93 nm, smallest observed 73 nm.”
The results were accurate; her measurements weren’t off. Her assistant, Charlie Furmann, had reserved the lab space at 8:30 that evening and she’d been inside until now. She checked her watch.
7:30 PM.
The act of checking her watch suddenly triggered her body to announce it was exhausted, and she yawned and stretched her arms. Standing, she shut the light from the microscope on the long lab table in order to prevent any unwanted reactions in the sample. She slipped on her lab coat — essentially her entry key to the myriad of rooms, labs, and closets spread around the building.
It would also get her into the cafeteria on the main level; her current destination. The nature of the work done at the research facility, as well as the personality types of those doing it, meant that the facility had 24/7 cafeteria access. The scientists and research assistants that populated these offices weren’t governed by traditional nine-to-five jobs, nor did they care for culturally accepted norms about when to sleep and when to work.
At any given point during the day, not just during posted breakfast, lunch, and dinner times, the cafeteria could be either completely empty or filled with talkative scientists discussing their latest research.
Dr. Torres stepped off the elevator on the main level. The halls were dimly lit with security lights, but the open doors of the cafeteria were filled with light that spilled into the corridor, beckoning. Another involuntary response in her brain was triggered by the light and the smell of food, and suddenly she felt pangs of hunger run up and down her insides.
Surprised to see that there was no one inside the cafeteria, she walked to an open-faced refrigerator unit and pulled out a small plastic bin of hummus and crackers and a 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi. She carried the Pepsi and hummus to a small point-of-sale system and cash register near the door and tapped her identification card on the credit card terminal. After the terminal beeped, she clipped the badge back to her lab coat pocket and walked back into the hallway. Just then, she felt her cell phone buzz in the pocket of her jeans. She shuffled the Pepsi around and reached in for her phone. It was a text from Charlie.
“Where are you? Wanted to check in with this model.”
She frowned, wondering why he had taken the time to send her a text message when he could have just waited for her to return. Stopping in the hallway, she sent a quick reply.
“Went to cafeteria. On my way back. What’s up?”
She didn’t wait for a response; instead, she stepped into the elevator and pressed the number for her floor. The elevator deposited her onto her floor, and she walked into the lab. She found Charlie, his back to her, hunched over the microscope.
“Hey, Charlie. What’s going on?”
Charlie jumped, then turned. “What is this, Dr. Torres? Is this the same sample that was sent over from earlier?”
“Yes…” Dr. Torres replied.
“Did they say what it was?”
“What do you mean? They sent over a standard laboratory-required specimen size for examination and classification. If they knew what it was already, they wouldn’t have sent it.”
Charlie frowned, then nodded. “I know, I guess I’m just confused…”
“What? What is it?”
“Well, I don’t understand why you would have mounted both samples at once.”
Now it was Dr. Torres’ turn to be confused. “Both? What do you mean?”
Charlie plugged in the external monitor display to the microscope’s output line, projecting the i
mage seen by the microscope onto a 40-inch HDTV hanging on the wall behind them. “Look,” he said, as he used a wireless computer mouse to draw a circle around one of the spherical objects on the screen. “This is your virus, right? The ‘Varicella Zoster’ strain, or whatever?”
She nodded.
“Well, when you continue to zoom in, you’ll see the standard components — nucleocapsid, lipids, different protein amalgamations, etcetera.”
Dr. Torres nodded again, trying to hurry him along.
“But then if you keep increasing the magnification…” he paused to reset the microscope’s magnification wheels, “you’ll notice that the interior structure of the virion is completely crammed with foreign bodies.”
“Foreign? How can they be? They’re part of the virus.”
“Right — but that doesn’t mean they always were. The virus certainly doesn’t look like it wants them in there, does it? They’re all bulging at the seams, thanks to these spirillum pushing everything around.”
Dr. Torres looked up sharply. “Spirillum? What are you talking about?”
He zoomed in even more. As the microscopic components of the viral organism came into focus, she saw the unmistakable spiraling of one of the common bacterial shapes. The twisted object grew as Charlie pushed the microscope to its limits; the screen suddenly appearing grainy and slightly out of focus.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“You didn’t see this before?” Charlie asked.
She shook her head.
“So, then, I’m guessing there weren’t two different samples?”
Both scientists were speechless as they stared at the TV monitor. The fuzzy black and white image was unmistakable.
“No. No, Charlie. There weren’t,” she said. “We’re looking at some sort of herpesvirus that contains a living, breathing, bacterial infection.”
“That’s impossible,” Charlie said. “There’s no way for the virions to provide livable conditions for the bacteria.”
“I know,” Dr. Torres said. “But we’re dealing with something completely different here; something outside the realm of what either of us has studied before.” As she spoke and stared at the screen in front of her, Dr. Torres grew more and more confident that what she was looking at was, in fact, what she said it was.
Impossible or not, what they were looking at was a living bacteria fully functioning inside a virus.
Chapter Twenty
SIX MONTHS AGO
DR. MALCOLM Fischer gasped. Sucking in a huge breath of air, he tried to swallow. It was painful; somehow, something wasn’t right. He tried to look down, but had a hard time moving his head.
Weird.
He tried moving his hands instead. Nothing.
His fingers, maybe?
Nope.
Malcolm felt glued down, lying on his back. At least it was comfortable.
What do I have control over, then? he wondered.
He opened his eyes, blinking once, twice. He moved his eyeballs around; at least he could see.
He tried to make sense of his surroundings. Bright lights, fluorescent. The kind used in offices and commercial buildings. Whitish walls, some sort of sterile color.
That was it.
Okay, what does that mean? Malcolm tried to move his body. Anything. Nothing would give. It was as if he was —
Am I paralyzed?
He considered it a moment. He didn’t remember taking a fall, or any type of accident. Actually, now that he thought harder, he couldn’t remember of anything. There was…
A helicopter.
Oh, God.
The memory roared back into Malcolm’s mind in a flash. The students…
He remembered being forced into the chopper at gunpoint, being pushed down into a seat and strapped in, then the gentle upward motion of the pilot’s expert takeoff. They ascended only a few feet off the ground.
The gun.
The horrid sound of hundreds of miniature explosions rocking the gunman back and forth on the side-mounted machine gun.
The one he’d fired into the students. His students.
A seizure of pain overtook him, but he couldn’t tell if it was merely psychological. He closed his eyes again, breathing. Still, his hands and legs and arms, everything, was frozen in place.
Where am I?
Just then, he heard a beeping sound. It had grown louder — or had he just now noticed it?
He pushed his eyelids apart and tried to look for the source of the sound. As his eyes opened, the beeping grew more intense; quicker.
He heard footsteps. Running.
“…Patient experiencing some sort of shock. Possible reaction…”
Voices drifted in and out. They were in the room.
Who were ‘they?’
Malcolm was growing agitated. He wanted answers, and he wanted to be able to move.
“He’s awake!”
More footsteps.
Now he could hear multiple people — three? — moving around his bed.
I’m in a hospital. It must be. I’m paralyzed.
“He’s no longer comatose?” one voice asked.
“No, he’s got his eyes open.”
The voices were hurried; frantic.
“Okay, let’s get some acetaminophen into him; he’s probably going to be a little rough around the edges.”
“Got it. We’re keeping him up?”
“No, no. That’s just to hold him over until he goes under again. It shouldn’t be long.”
Malcolm heard a popping sound, followed by the smell of something bitter. Some sort of chemical. A bag of liquid was suddenly passed directly over his face. He saw a strange assortment of letters and numbers, then a few letters that his brain computed as words.
Global. D-something Global.
“Ok, right. DG headquarters is going to be here tomorrow morning, and we need to get him back down.” Another pop, followed by a sloshing sound, reached Malcolm’s ears.
He tried to speak, but he wasn’t sure he had control of his vocal cords. It didn’t matter, anyway, as he realized he couldn’t even open his mouth.
A small hand pulled his chin down, forcing his mouth open, and he felt — sort of — a pill being inserted into it.
“It won’t matter — I’ve already reported that we’ve achieved success.”
“Yes, I know, I read the report,” the first voice — a man’s — said. “Still, they won’t want to see him awake. They’ll need him under for the final round of testing, so there’s no reason to let him become too aware.”
Malcolm tried to piece things together. He was paralyzed. Waking from a coma, anyway.
“How’d he wake up?” the second voice asked. It was a woman, probably the one who’d forced his mouth open.
“It’s a standard reaction to the chemical; almost like developing an immunity. Most subjects awaken after four to six months. He made it to five and a half.”
“Can we up the dosage?”
“No, a higher dosage will likely kill him. Keep the mg count steady; just track it closer. Any increase in heart rate or changes in sleep cycles, have someone come in and check it out.”
“Got it.”
Malcolm heard them finish up, then leave the room. He was left to his own thoughts and the slow, methodical beeping noise.
He suddenly felt the pricking of thousands of nerve endings flaring up in his neck and head, as if needles just below the surface of his skin were trying to poke their way out. It was painful, but it meant something else.
He could move his head.
It was the same feeling he’d had when a body part fell asleep. He could feel the line of nerves crawling up and around his face. Slowly, painfully, he tried to move the outer muscles in his face — cheeks, lips, ears. He thought he could feel the slightest of motions.
His face continued to “wake up.” He’d have preferred the traditional feeling of being awake, rather than the feeling of millions of ants crawling over his head, but he
didn’t argue. He moved his mouth.
Using an unbelievable amount of energy, he tried lifting his head. Yes! It was moving. His head was lifting up from the bed, slowly, surely…
It fell. He could hold it no longer. His head fell backwards onto the pillow that had been placed below him.
With a deep, exhaling breath, he recovered and tried again. A little farther this time.
He could now see his body. It was covered in a sheet, and his feet poked out from the bottom of it. Behind that was the door to the room he was in. It too was white, the off-white color no doubt picked for its price and not is appeal.
Again, his head fell back to the pillow.
This is good, he told himself. I’m getting stronger each time.
As Malcolm tried for the third time, however, he realized something. They’d injected him with something. Possibly multiple things.
He was probably only minutes away from passing out into a coma once again.
I need to get out of here.
He lay back for a few extra seconds, summoning energy, then he tried once more to lift his head.
He wanted to scream. Pain shot through his head, worse than any migraine he’d ever experienced. Don’t. Stop. He chanted to himself over and over again. Don’t. Stop.
His head was now fully upright, perpendicular to his body and the flat bed on which he rested. Now what? He forced his neck to each side, glancing down at the maze of tubes that were inserted into different parts of his body. He had no idea what they did or what human bodily function they were intended to perform. Some seemed empty — maybe those were waste tubes?
Others had clear liquids running through them, and a few had deep crimson liquid coursing through them.
He didn’t have much choice. He could still only move his head, and he didn’t have the luxury to wait around for more of his body to wake up. He looked down and to his right, noticing a small clear tube that had been inserted into the soft skin underneath his upper arm, just below his shoulder.
If I can reach that…
He struggled again, forcing his head forward and down. A little more…
