by Greg Cox
Yet here she was, racing to see to her students, while the automated countdown provided a chilling confirmation of the intruder's ghastly prediction. Everett ran beside her, looking just as stunned and bewildered as everyone else.
Granted, they had all planned and drilled for just such an emergency situation, but Maggie had never really expected to ever have to actually evacuate Chrysalis. Not after all the precautions they'd taken to keep the very existence of the project concealed from the world.
The two instructors arrived at Children's Dormitory # 5 within minutes. The swing-shift caretaker, Jessica McGivney, had already started getting the pajama-clad toddlers ready to leave, rousing them from bed and helping them into slippers and robes. Maggie offered a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of smaller class sizes, grateful that she was only personally responsible for the safety of Lot Epsilon, a grouping of no more than fifteen students. Twenty-five minutes, she thought. That should be just enough time to herd all the children to the nearest emergency exit.
“All right,” she said loudly, clapping her hands together to get the children's attention. “Everyone be quiet and listen closely.” She paused long enough for the chatter and general hubbub to die down, except for some mild sobs and sniffles, which Jessica and Everett attended to as best they could. “Everything is going to be okay,” Maggie assured her underage audience, “but you need to do exactly as we practiced. Please line up by the door, quickly but calmly. Remember, no pushing.”
To her relief, the children complied readily, with only minimal jostling and disarray. As usual, Noon was first in line, a position uncontested by any of the other toddlers. He has a natural talent for leadership, she noted, just like his mother. Noon's presence in Lot Epsilon only added to Maggie's acute sense of responsibility. The director would never forgive me if anything happened to her boy.
The very thought sent a shudder down her spine. “Very good,” she praised the class, forcing that nightmarish scenario out of her mind. Pride brought a small smile to her face as she watched the toddlers follow her directions to the letter; she doubted if any ordinary four-year-olds, conceived via a random shuffling of genes and chromosomes, could have coped even half so well with an emergency of this nature. “Now then,” she instructed, opening the door to the corridor outside, “I want you to follow me as quickly as you can.” She looked over the children's mussed and uncombed heads to her fellow caretakers. “Jessica, Everett, watch the rear of the line to make sure we don't lose any stragglers.”
Before she could step through the door, however, something bizarre happened. From out of nowhere, a strange blue fog filled the dormitory, glowing like radioactive waste. For a few heart-stopping seconds, Maggie felt sure that the self-destructing reactor below them had released its blazing atomic venom prematurely. Time's up, she thought despairingly. We're dead.
But when the luminous mist did not scald the flesh from her bones, she realized that instant incineration was not in the offing. Nor did the strange fog assault her lungs, the way an enemy gas attack would. She was alive, she could breathe, she was still conscious; she just didn't know what was happening. All she felt was a peculiar tingling sensation all over her body, like static electricity. What is this? she worried, cringing instinctively from the touch of the mist. I don't understand.
The blue fog spread rapidly, growing thicker and more opaque by the second. Within moments, the mist completely hid the children and the other adults from view. “Maggie?” Everett called from deep within the swirling, incandescent fog, his voice almost lost amid the frightened cries and questions of the confused and disoriented children. She heard dozens of tiny slippers stampede upon the carpet as the neatly ordered line of toddlers broke apart into utter bedlam. “Maggie!” Everett shouted again. “Where are you?”
“Over here!” she yelled back. Desperate to save at least one of her precious charges, she reached into the fog and grabbed on to Noon. Thankfully, her prize student had not yet scattered like his classmates. How brave! she thought. How superior! She clutched Noon tightly against her waist, almost smothering him. “Don't be scared!” she exclaimed fervently. “I have you.”
“I am not afraid,” the boy insisted, his pride wounded. His diminutive frame maintained a tense, ready posture, neither pulling away nor yielding to Maggie's embrace. “But we should leave here. Now.”
Yes! Maggie thought. Of course! She could come back for the other children later, or Everett and Jessica could take care of them. First, she had to get Noon to safety, and away from this insane, unnatural fog.
Then, just as she reached her decision, she felt Noon literally dissolving within her grasp. His very flesh and bones seemed to melt away, becoming as insubstantial as the mist surrounding them. “No!” she shrieked in anguish, trying to hold on to him with all her might, but the evaporating child slipped like vapor through her fingers, leaving her empty-handed and alone. “Noon!” she screamed, so hard it left her throat raw, but it was too late. The little boy was gone.
The mysterious fog departed with him, dispersing as swiftly and inexplicably as it had come, leaving the three adults standing, baffled and aghast, in an empty dormitory. It was not only Noon who had disappeared into the mist, Maggie saw. All the children were missing. “Where are they?” Jessica asked stridently, her hands clutching her skull in horror. Her shocked face was white as the chalk they sometimes used in class. “Where have they gone? Where?”
Maggie knew just how the other woman felt. Panic and hysteria clawed at her sanity. How could a roomful of children just vanish like that? It was like magic—black magic—but Maggie had never believed in magic. I'm a psychologist, dammit, she thought, trying hard not to fall apart. This was like something out of some horrible fairy tale. The Pied Piper maybe, spiriting away the beloved children of Hamelin. . . .
“Twenty minutes to atomic sterilization.” So dumbfounded was Maggie by the children's miraculous disappearance that it took a few seconds for the full urgency of the automated warning to sink in. Sterilization—hah! she thought bitterly. She knew that was just a feeble euphemism for a full-scale nuclear explosion. And why not? With the children gone, what is there left to save?
Everett tugged on her arm. “Maggie, we need to hurry.” Jessica fled the abandoned dormitory as Everett pleaded with his fiancée. “There's no choice, Maggie. We have to go.”
“But the children . . .” she murmured. Her eyes searched the corners of the bunk-filled chamber, not yet accepting that so many toddlers could just vanish like that. Only empty beds met her hopeless gaze. “Lot Epsilon?”
“They're gone, Maggie. I don't how, but they're gone.” He glanced anxiously at the clock over the door, counting down the moments to Chrysalis's thermonuclear demise. “Please, we have to hurry!”
Reluctantly, Maggie looked away from the vacant dormitory, letting the other teacher drag her out of the children's quarters and into the hallway, where they joined a pell-mell rush to safety. Everett was right, she realized; there was nothing else to do. Chrysalis had become Hamelin, and the glorious future they had worked so hard to bring about had somehow been snatched away by forces unknown. She could only hope that, wherever Noon and his classmates had gone, they were someplace very far from the radioactive inferno Chrysalis was about to become.
I should have killed that smug American bastard when I had the chance! Donald Archibald Williams raged as he keyed his security code into the electronic lock guarding the top-secret germ-warfare labs on Level Four. His ruddy face was flushed and sweating, and his frantic sprint from his quarters, where he had been enjoying a much-needed snooze, had left him panting and short of breath. The blaring emergency sirens wreaked havoc with his migraine, sending agonizing pulsations through his temples with every clangorous repetition of the alarm. I knew he was trouble the minute I saw him.
He cursed Sarina Kaur as well, for dragging him into this bloody project in the first place. Not that he'd had much choice in the matter; having uncovered his own legally d
ubious efforts at human cloning, along with its unfortunate casualties, Kaur had all too easily blackmailed him into joining Chrysalis. Now, with the entire insane enterprise seemingly crashing down all around him, he couldn't help wondering if he wouldn't have been better off facing the music in the first place.
A loud hiss escaped from inside the lab as the airtight metal door unsealed itself. Only three individuals in Chrysalis had access to the facilities on Level Four: Kaur, Lozinak, and himself. Now, with his future suddenly thrown into uncertainty, Williams intended to take advantage of that privileged status to secure a crucial bit of insurance to help him weather whatever storms might lie ahead. Nothing like a unique, new bioweapon to use as a bargaining chip, he thought, formulating desperate new plans on the run. The Russians are bound to be interested in Kaur's pet bacteria, and maybe the Americans as well. . . .
“Attention. Twenty-two minutes to atomic sterilization,” the PA system announced, continuing its inexorable countdown. Acutely aware that time was rapidly ticking away, Williams ignored the protective biohazard suits hanging inside the entrance to Level Four, hurrying on to the inner chambers of the laboratory. Empty steel vats, waiting for the vast quantities of peptone that had just arrived from America, rested between aisles of sterile white tiles and plastic tubing. Williams glanced nervously over his shoulder, half-expecting to be surprised by either Seven or Sarina Kaur, arriving just in time to catch him in the act. He wasn't sure who he was most afraid of confronting. Kaur, most likely; as far as he knew, Seven had never ordered the coldblooded execution of any of his subordinates.
Another set of airlocks stood between him and the object of his impromptu shopping expedition. Sweaty fingers pounded a frustratingly long numerical sequence into a mounted keypad, and he waited impatiently for the lock to verify his security clearance. He yanked hard on the gleaming chrome door handle the minute he heard the welcome hiss of escaping air, and hurriedly entered the earthquake-proof chamber beyond.
Strictly off-limits to all but Kaur and her most trusted associates, the cool, air-conditioned metal vault contained only a locked filing cabinet and a refrigerator hooked up to its own emergency generator. William attacked the filing cabinet first, hastily unlocking the top drawer and rifling through an assortment of tightly packed hanging folders. An adhesive label reading “Carn-Strep—gen. 18.7” identified the specific file he required. Yes! he thought avidly. Just what I was looking for.
Enclosed was the exact genetic sequence for the latest generation of Sarina Kaur's carnivorous streptococcus. With this recipe, he knew, and the proper facilities, anyone with sufficient know-how and desire would be able to re-create the fearsome flesh-eating bacteria, and perhaps even improve on it. For himself, Williams only wanted to use the formula to buy himself a comfortable retirement somewhere far from the reach of anyone who might come looking for him. The West Indies, maybe, or South America.
He glanced quickly at the nearby refrigerator, containing actual samples of the modified Strep A bacteria. He briefly considered snatching a carefully sealed specimen of the vicious microorganism, for added insurance, but promptly decided against it. Transporting a living sample of the bug, even in an unbreakable plastic container, would be just too nerve-racking, particularly given the uncertain exodus ahead.
“No need to get greedy,” he muttered. The formula for the disease was more than enough. He pocketed a folded piece of paper bearing the relevant genetic sequence, then looked toward the exit. His head throbbed miserably.
“Attention. Twenty-one minutes to atomic sterilization.” Time to go, he realized. In a moment of perverse defiance, he tugged open the door of the refrigeration unit, exposing the vulnerable bacteria inside to room temperature, not to mention the coming nuclear holocaust. Take that, you blackmailing witch, he thought. Let your microscopic little monsters go up in flames with the rest of this wretched place!
Carrying a stolen recipe for a biological nightmare, along with halfcooked plans for the future, Williams rushed out of Level Four in search of safety—and whatever else fate had in store for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
00:19:51
LESS THAN TWENTY MINUTES TO GO, SEVEN NOTED FROM HIS SEAT AT THE control panel. He studied the various gauges on display, carefully monitoring the self-destructive process unfolding within the concrete reactor silo. According to the instrumentation, temperatures within the reactor core were rapidly approaching two thousand degrees Celsius, while the chain reaction building inside the silo would soon pass the point of no return, as the uranium fuel rods melted into a single critical mass. Seven intended to stay at the reactor controls until the very last minute, just in case Sarina Kaur and her followers attempted to abort the coming explosion.
As he familiarized himself with Chrysalis's primary source of energy, he had to admire, in a perverse fashion, the manner in which the reactor had been expressly designed to provide a spectacular funeral pyre for the project, had circumstances so required. Ordinarily, the breakdown of this sort of primitive pressurized-water reactor would only result in a catastrophic meltdown, not a full-scale nuclear explosion, but the Chrysalis reactor was different; as far as he could tell from the schematics on display in the control room, the processed uranium at this reactor's core had deliberately been arranged in precisely the right quantity and configuration to guarantee an atomic explosion deep beneath the desolate sands of the Great Thar Desert.
“Typical,” Seven muttered under his breath. The reactor's insidious design seemed emblematic of the project's overall approach: the latest in cutting-edge technology inextricably wed to an overwhelming potential for disaster. The sooner the whole endeavor is obliterated, he resolved, the better.
“Fifteen minutes to atomic sterilization.” The recorded announcement confirmed the digital readout before him. Seven prayed that Chrysalis's numerous inhabitants had heeded the previous warnings, and that they were already on their way to safety. He worried less about the fate of the project's blameless superchildren; Roberta and Isis, he knew, could be trusted to carry out that end of the mission. If only the larger problem caused by the children's very existence could be dealt with so easily . . . !
A blinking red annunciator light alerted Seven to a worrisome buildup of hydrogen gas within the reactor core. While insufficient to halt the chain reaction itself, the excess hydrogen could cause preliminary explosions inside the concrete silo, explosions that might pose some danger to Seven himself. Best to keep an eye on that, he determined, at least until it was time for him to transport out of the doomed complex, roughly ten minutes from now.
To his surprise, however, an explosion came not from the enormous cement cylinder beyond the open window, but from the sealed metal door at the far end of the control room. The powerful blast literally blew the heavy metal gate inward and out of the doorframe, while the accompanying shock wave knocked Seven out of his seat and onto the floor. Billowing clouds of black smoke permeated the control room, making his eyes sting, and the acrid scent of crude plastic explosives assailed his nostrils. What in the Aegis's name . . . ? he thought, his ears ringing from the thundering detonation.
Dazed, he lifted his battered head from the floor just in time to witness Dr. Sarina Kaur come striding through the hazy fumes into the control room. She held a Walther PPK pistol in her hand and a determined expression on her face. Behind her, as the smoke quickly cleared, Seven glimpsed the now-open doorway, through which he spotted the elevator and foyer beyond. Kaur carefully stepped around the scorched and crumpled remains of the fallen gate as she aimed the muzzle of her weapon at the stunned and defenseless man upon the floor. “Please don't get up, Mr. Seven,” she instructed him, her icy tone belying the blazing hatred in her dark eyes. “And keep your hands where I can see them; we don't want another demonstration of your singularly efficacious penmanship.”
His servo tucked away in his pocket, Seven avoided any sudden moves, not wanting to provoke Kaur to further violence. “Listen to me,” he bese
eched her hoarsely. Lingering traces of smoke irritated his throat as he spoke. “You have to believe me, this is for the best.”
“Silence!” Kaur barked. She was without her ubiquitous Sikh bodyguards, whom Seven assumed she must have given leave to evacuate with the rest of Chrysalis's personnel. He found it hard to reconcile that concern for her people with the ruthlessness which he knew, from firsthand experience, she was capable of, but then, he recalled acidly, twentieth-century humans, no matter how brilliant, still tended to divide the world into Us and Them, with only the former worthy of concern. I wonder if Kaur's all-star team of geniuses managed to eliminate that trait from the human genome? he wondered. Somehow I doubt it.
Keeping her gun pointed at Seven, Kaur hurried to the control panel Seven had just vacated. Without bothering to right the toppled chair next to the console, she flicked a switch on the control panel and leaned toward the attached microphone. “Abort Emergency Self-Destruct Sequence,” she commanded emphatically. “Executive Authority Kaur-slash-alpha-alpha.”
Was it still possible to halt the chain reaction? Seven honestly wasn't sure, and, judging from the worried expression on the director's face, neither was Sarina Kaur. How could anyone make reliable predictions about such an archaic and unstable piece of atomic engineering?
“Attempting to abort emergency self-destruct sequence,” the computer reported. Easier said than done, apparently, Seven noted, as Kaur stared uneasily at the gauges before her. Seven himself couldn't see the displays from his position on the floor, but he guessed that the data was not encouraging. “We need to get out of here,” he told Kaur sincerely. “Please believe me, if not for yourself, then for the child you carry. Let me up and I can get us both to safety.”
“Quiet!” Kaur snapped at him, punctuating her command with a gunshot that burrowed a hole in the floor in front of Seven. The gravid geneticist frantically worked the controls of the reactor, trying to undo the irreversible.
