The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  Zora snorted as she slammed her hand on the desk. “I like you!” She turned to Poole. “Why couldn’t you be more like him?”

  Poole shook her head. “There is no one like him.”

  “Well,” Zora settled back into the chair again, “if you fix us, Doc, I’ll give you a shiny new nickel.” Zora smiled broadly. “Rendela will assist you. Professor Devereaux will double-check your work. And if you’re good, maybe we’ll let you keep your baby. Now off you go.”

  Rendela lifted Poole out of her chair and pulled her toward the doorway. Poole said, “It would go faster if I had my interface.”

  “But I’m not done playing with it yet,” Zora replied.

  * * *

  As the hours progressed, Poole’s endurance evaporated. Nausea fought with exhaustion for control of her body, though exhaustion was winning. What were the odds of becoming pregnant for the first time at forty-two?

  Rendela reached over and touched her shoulder. “You gonna puke again?”

  “I’m just tired,” she answered. “I’ve been working on this almost nonstop for the past thirty hours.”

  “I can give you another stimulant.”

  “No. Please. That might harm the baby.” Poole pointed to the screen in front of her as she struggled to regain her composure. “So far, I’ve mapped everything from the nano-analyzers to the psychometric controls. I’ve outlined the progression of steps necessary to retrograde the implant override technology. It’s easy to eliminate the chemicals you were receiving, but the genetic component is trickier. I just need a few minutes to collect my thoughts. What’s going on out there? When are you planning to attack Earth?”

  “Soon.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Rendela sighed. “Standard operating procedure, Doctor. You know that. Keep hostages ignorant as much as possible. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten a tactic you yourself taught us. Besides, Zora will be here any moment. She’ll tell you what she wants you to know.”

  As if on cue, the door opened and Zora stepped into the room. “Maddening, isn’t it?” she said. “For years you kept us in the dark about why we were in your program and what you’d done to us. We just had to trust that you knew best.”

  Emotions flooded Poole: relief, fear, hope, despair. Why was she suddenly so vulnerable? “I’m sorry, Zora. I was only doing my job.” Even as she spoke, she realized that with Zora, only absolute truth would work. “I believed in our mission—”

  “Yes, and now you’re having doubts.”

  “I also have a baby growing inside me. That changes a woman.”

  “You look the same to me. Now, we’ve got to figure out which targets to hit. Eli picked such boring ones.”

  Poole said, “Why do all this? You’ve got the Moon. You figured out our plan. You overrode the controls that prevented you from harming Admiral Cho. Can’t you do the same with the controls that dictate you attack Earth?”

  “Maybe we want to attack Earth anyway.”

  Poole said, “You’ve got some other agenda. But I can’t figure out what it is. I’m tired. I need sleep, Zora.”

  “Later. Devereaux says your work has no serious flaws.”

  “If you trust him so much, why not have him do the work?”

  “Then we wouldn’t need you, would we?” Zora smiled. “Believe me, I thought about it. But I have my reasons for choosing you.”

  “You’re afraid he wouldn’t do it. Or you think he might sabotage the process so cleverly you won’t be able to find the flaw until it’s too late.”

  “Very good, Doctor.” Zora clapped her hands, mimicking one of Poole’s habits. “I’m also reviewing everything the two of you do. So don’t think you can slip a harmful change past me. In fact, that’s why I’m here. There are a couple things I don’t understand in the process of modifying our genetic structures. And I don’t intend to take that action until we’ve discussed exactly what the changes will do and why.”

  Zora stepped to Poole’s tablet and opened the files Poole had been using. For the next two hours, she grilled Poole on each proposed alteration and what it would do to the cadets’ psychological makeup. Zora’s intensity kept Poole’s fatigue at bay. She explained each step, unsurprised at how quickly Zora grasped each one. Zora had always been the brightest student but, like Curtik, she must have been holding back her full potential in classes and tests. Now that she was no longer under Poole’s command, she obviously felt free to display the magnitude of her incredible intellect.

  “Were all of you this way?” Poole finally asked. “Did you all hide the full extent of your abilities from us?”

  Zora shrugged. “A few of us thought we might need an edge. Our way of rebelling, since we couldn’t do so outwardly.”

  “But how did you hide it? You were monitored constantly. There would have been no way to do it, unless . . .”

  “I see the bulb lighting up over your head. Go ahead, Doctor.”

  “You would have had to hold something back from the beginning.”

  “No—just from when you took over the project. By that point, we all dreamed of freedom. And some of us—the smartest ones or the most determined ones—realized that if you knew how gifted we really were, we would lose whatever edge we had. But that’s not the scary part.” Zora stopped talking, a faint smile touching her lips.

  “What’s the scary part?” Poole asked.

  “We apparently reached that decision independently at almost exactly the same time, which is why you never caught it.”

  “Amazing,” Poole said. “How could that be?”

  “You came in to finalize our development just as we were reaching physical maturity. We knew from your reaction to our abilities that we could go beyond anything that came before. You saw what we could become, while Dr. Hack’emup never saw us as anything but experiments—freaks.”

  “So now your plan is what?”

  “If I tell you,” Zora said in a stage whisper, “I’ll have to kill you.”

  Rendela laughed.

  “I will tell you this,” Zora said. “Your interface has been fascinating. We never knew how passionate you are.”

  Poole’s face flushed with anger and embarrassment. “You’ve been reading my personal journal?”

  Zora took Poole’s interface from her pocket and handed it over. “Your password was Naples4Me. Anyone could have hacked that. And I’m afraid you were right about one thing. You’ll probably never return to Earth. We need you here on our side. Isn’t it nice to feel wanted?”

  Poole attached her interface. “I’m sorry, Zora—for everything.”

  Zora shrugged. “Too late. They took away our memories, our families, everything we knew and loved—to make us into perfect little fighters. Do you know who my mother is? My father? Do I have brothers or sisters? Does Rendela?”

  “I’m sure it’s on record. Eli must know.”

  Zora shook her head. Her eyes narrowed. Her nostrils flared. And her face hardened. “You told us Damon devolved because his body rejected the treatments. Is that true or did you make it happen so you could give him to Jones? Are we going to devolve too and get the cancer Damon has? You don’t know, do you?”

  Poole shook her head. She found herself blinking back tears. “Dr. Hackett’s team did the nano-surgery. I just refined the neuropsychological components. I thought I was doing . . . we made the hard choices because no one else would. I know it was awful. And I could never do it again. But look at what’s happening on Earth. India and China at war. Nuclear weapons. Environmental disasters. Our intent was to make that better.”

  Zora held up her hand. “I’m not judging you, Doctor. I am what I am. I don’t know if I’m happy about that or not. But I can live with it, as long as you give me back my humanity. One thing I’ve learned from all this though—one thing you and Eli taught me that really sank in—is no
t to make value judgments about good and bad. The world will think of us as evil unless we win. Then we get to write history.”

  Nausea suddenly flooded Poole again. She bent over and retched into the recycler.

  “She’s been doing that a lot lately,” Rendela said.

  “Poor pregnant Poole,” Zora said.

  As Poole lifted her head, Zora grabbed a tissue from the desk and wiped Poole’s mouth. “Don’t worry. Rendela here will take good care of you.” Zora suddenly went still, accessing her implant. “Excuse me. Curtik is being a bad boy again.”

  Zora left the room. Poole couldn’t help but admire her force of will, her intelligence, her amazing ability to handle every situation with aplomb far beyond her years. She terrified Poole. And yet she was so damned hard to hate. Even now Poole found herself wanting Zora’s respect and admiration.

  Rendela said, “Okay, Doc, let’s get you cleaned up and back to work.”

  “I can’t. I’m exhausted. If you need to kill me, kill me, but I need to close my eyes for a while.” Poole leaned back in her chair and glared at Rendela.

  Rendela put her hands up. “Well, you win, then. I surrender. You’ve got twenty minutes.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Under the changing colors of a bacteria-filled glow globe hovering above him, Jeremiah sat in his wheelchair, his joints feeling like they’d been implanted with burrs. Even sitting still, he felt a constant dull throbbing. And when he moved, a fiery agony struck, making him want to lash out—an instinctive animal response that he recognized but only barely controlled. The Susquehanna Virus intensified his pain, though Dr. Wellon didn’t yet know why.

  Adding to his discomfort was his suspicion that Zora intended to attack Earth soon, but she had cut off communication with Lunar Base 2, so he couldn’t be certain. He wondered if she would attack the Escala too.

  Across the room, sitting up in his bed, Damon stared from Dr. Wellon to Zeriphi to Krall and Oggie with a frown of intense concentration, as if he could see their worry. Krall and Oggie, assigned to guard against any sudden attack, stood against the far wall, tense, aware of Damon’s attention. He remained under the influence of sedatives and painkillers, no longer showing murderous tendencies now that Dr. Wellon had refined the blend of chemicals and hormones pumped into him. But his body was aging rapidly and Dr. Wellon could do nothing to stop it. Jeremiah noted the gray hair at Damon’s temples and felt a hollowness in his chest that made breathing difficult.

  With each passing hour Jeremiah found himself growing more attached to the boy, who insisted on being called Damon. “I don’t remember Joshua,” he said. “And no matter how many stories you tell, I’ll never remember him.”

  Perhaps the greatest frustration for Jeremiah was that his son hadn’t smiled at him even once since they’d been reunited.

  Dr. Wellon crouched down beside Jeremiah and said, “Biologically, he’s about fifty now. Seven years older than you. If we stop giving him the sedatives and painkillers, he’ll attack us. The pain would drive him insane. And the nano-cancer inside him will overpower his bloodstream in less than a week.” She flexed her hands into ham-sized fists. “On the other hand, keeping him on the sedatives and painkillers will age him more and more rapidly unless we can find a way to slow it down.” Her face sagged with sorrow. “It’s more than just the WRN protein, more than the RecQ homologs. It’s a variable degradation of the small nucleotide polymorphisms in conjunction with the nano-analyzers and filters.”

  She lifted her hands as if asking Jeremiah to understand the difficulty. He said, “So there’s no hope?”

  She shrugged, looked down at the floor. “Devereaux is helping, but I fear . . .”

  Jeremiah nodded. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’re doing the best you can. If a cure comes in time, it’ll be because of your efforts.”

  Dr. Wellon gently touched his shoulder and turned away.

  “Talking about me again?” Damon asked. He tilted his head and looked at Jeremiah with a resigned expression that Jeremiah wished were a smile. “I don’t have a lot of pain. But I have no energy.” He turned to Dr. Wellon. “You’re worried about Zora attacking you. All of you are. But I can’t see how it will come out in the end. She’s . . .”

  He shook his head. “My brain feels wrong. I can’t concentrate. My head feels like it’s about to explode. Maybe it’d be better just to die and get it over with.”

  “Don’t say that.” Jeremiah lifted his hand, wincing as he did so. “There’s always hope. Always.”

  Damon shook his head. “Don’t you ever feel like life isn’t worth it anymore? Before the sedatives and painkillers I often begged for death. Now it doesn’t hurt as much, but I can feel the pain lurking.” Damon reached up to scratch his face, caught himself, stared at his hand as if seeing it for the first time and forced it back down. “And if it ever comes back like before, kill me.”

  “Damon,” Dr. Wellon said, “I just got a transmission from Devereaux.”

  “More treatments,” Damon said as he lay back on the massive bed. “Come on, boys. Strap me down.”

  Dr. Wellon nodded to Krall and Oggie, who secured Damon with wide straps. The bed, designed for the Escala, made him look like a little boy. A glow globe shone a white light on him, washing his color away. Jeremiah trembled, dreading the thought of losing his son now that he’d finally found him. He could almost see Joshua in a hazy future, graduating from college, then medical school, becoming a famous psychiatrist, known for his empathic gifts.

  The door chime sounded.

  “Greetings,” Devereaux said as he stepped into the room, his hands full of vials and his PlusPhone. Dr. Wellon backed away from her station, allowing Devereaux access, while Krall and Oggie stepped to the wall, following Devereaux with their eyes. Even Damon watched Devereaux, twisting his head to keep the great man in view. Zeriphi slipped outside after a brief nod to Devereaux.

  Jeremiah said, “You’re not wearing your mask.”

  “It’s okay,” Devereaux said.

  “What about the virus?” Jeremiah asked.

  Devereaux shrugged. “Masks won’t prevent the spread of the virus. It’s already escaped its containment and permeated the air of the settlement. It’s done the same on Earth, though that has been kept secret by those governments aware of it. There were multiple strains in the sample sent up here—some transmittable by air, some by water. They present as essentially identical prior to infection, only demonstrating their differences upon attaching to a human host. That’s one of the reasons we can’t predict how and to whom it will spread in a given case.”

  “So anyone up here could be infected at any time?”

  “I’m afraid so. But don’t worry about Damon. Like the Escala, he’s immune. It’s only the older humans who are at risk.”

  “Including you,” Jeremiah said.

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Now let’s get to work.” He looked at Damon and stopped, saying, “You’re interesting. You see us clearly, don’t you?”

  Damon nodded. “You’re afraid.”

  “Yes, we are,” Devereaux replied. “We don’t want to lose you. So we’re going to try again to slow the aging process. I’ve modified two more amino acids and fabricated a new nano-trigger for delivery into the WRN protein. The insertion will be painless, but I don’t know how your body will react to the changes.”

  “I’m not afraid,” Damon said.

  As Devereaux huddled with Dr. Wellon, explaining the nature of his experiments, Jeremiah braced himself for the agony of movement, lowered his hands to the wheels of his chair and began to roll himself toward Damon’s bed. Before he traveled a few feet, Krall quickly slid-hopped over and pushed him to Damon’s bedside.

  When he reached the bed, Damon said, “What about Lendra? Want me to ask Zora if you can see her?”

  Jeremiah shrugged, a tiny gesture that n
evertheless hurt. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

  “We’re already in contact via implant.”

  “Oh,” Jeremiah didn’t know why that surprised him. Of course Zora would maintain contact with Damon. For a moment, he wondered if Zora was using Damon as a spy. He decided he didn’t care. He said, “I don’t know if I trust Lendra.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s complicated. From the beginning of our relationship I suspected she was doing Eli’s bidding—spying on me. I didn’t really worry about it because I thought I’d left that life behind. But now, with everything going on up here, it feels like I’m being dragged back in.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “I thought I did,” Jeremiah said. “I’ve never been good at reading women. I loved Julianna and she betrayed me. Then I didn’t believe her when she turned her life around, which got her killed. As for your mother, I didn’t see her suicide coming. I should have, but somehow I didn’t. And Lendra, well . . . as much as I care for her, without trust . . .”

  Damon reached out with his fingers as far as the straps would let him: a few inches—the first time he’d made any move toward Jeremiah. A lightness found Jeremiah’s heart. My son! He fought the pain and tears as he took Damon’s hand. It felt cool and comforting. “What I’m trying to say,” Damon said, “is that you shouldn’t avoid her on my account. I don’t remember my mother and I don’t remember you. I wish I did. You must really be my father because I can tell that you love me.”

  Jeremiah’s vision blurred. “I do.”

  “I wish I loved you back.”

  Joy infused Jeremiah and for a moment he felt no pain at all. “That’s okay. I’m not as worried about that as I am about you getting better. And as Devereaux says,” Jeremiah looked over at Devereaux, “you can help yourself greatly with a positive attitude.”

  Devereaux stepped forward and placed his hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder. “True. And while we’re waiting for the results of this latest transfusion, you and I need to talk.” Devereaux grabbed the handles of Jeremiah’s wheelchair and backed him away from the bed. “It might take a couple of hours. May as well use the time.”