The Susquehanna Virus Box Set

by Steve McEllistrem

  “Please, no,” Dr. Poole said, as if he could hear her.

  “I doubt this will stop the hacks,” Devereaux said, “for I was not behind them, but I will honor our leaders’ request and depart this realm. I will not return. Good luck to you all. You may begin.”

  Devereaux went dark and the two robots moved in to dissect him. They yanked his arms from his torso, then ripped the head clear of the body and finally tore the legs off. A most violent end. Lendra knew he felt nothing, that he had shut himself down before the robots began demolishing his body, but she watched in horrified fascination, as if a real person were being murdered in front of her. She glanced over at Dr. Poole and Jay-Edgar. They too seemed sickened by the images.

  The robots pulled apart Devereaux’s torso, exposing the organic computer inside. They removed the “brain” from the torso and set it on the floor, then walked to a table where they each selected a Las-knife. Returning to the torso, they switched the Las-knives on and brought them down to the organic computer, melting it into a gray-green puddle.

  “How could he do that to himself?” Jay-Edgar said.

  “He was a man of honor,” Dr. Poole replied.

  Jay-Edgar displayed more screens, images of unrest from around the world as people began reacting to the instantaneous transmission of Devereaux’s final death. The screens showed only scattered pockets of violence so far, most a result of other causative factors, but rioting and demonstrations over this action would begin soon, Lendra knew.

  “We have work to do,” she said, trying to stay professional. She felt a terrible loneliness come over her, a sense that the world had forever changed. First Jeremiah had left her and now Devereaux had departed. Jeremiah would see this broadcast. It would be aired on every channel as an emergency transmission. And he would not return. How she knew this, she couldn’t say. But it hit her like a blow to the chest, a truth she somehow intuited. Whether he survived his mission or not, he would never return to her.

  Chapter 34

  Dr. Wellon stood before the assembled miners, Doug beside her, watching every face. He noted the hostility on virtually all of them. Even the foreman, Colin Enright, looked angry, though that might have been because Dr. Wellon had insisted they retrieve his pod and reconnect it to the MineStar units. Or perhaps he was upset that they weren’t getting any work done.

  “We’re all here,” Enright said as the last of the miners appeared. “What’s this all about?”

  “One of you,” Dr. Wellon said, “is a murderer, and it’s not Doug. One of you infected Doug with the virus and he in turn infected the rest of you.”

  “How do you know that?” Enright said.

  “Because Doug was infected on the ship, as were all of you. The only possible way for the virus to have gotten onboard was for someone to have smuggled it onto the ship. We don’t know who it was or why you did it, but one of you may have just killed your companions and yourself.”

  “You’re lying!” Wilcox shouted. “It’s some sort of trick. We all know it was Doug. He got infected by Devereaux and spread it to us.”

  “That’s not possible,” said Dr. Wellon. “Think about the decontamination protocols put in place before you left Earth. The ones Doug endured were far more rigorous than yours.”

  “You said it’s a new strain of the virus,” Enright said. “Is it possible it just slipped past the protocols?”

  Dr. Wellon shrugged. “Possible, yes, but extremely unlikely. Doug was never in a position to contract the virus after Devereaux became a robot. And this version of the virus didn’t exist until after that time. No, the only solution that makes sense is that one of you did it.”

  “But why?”

  “We believe someone wanted to infect the Escala and we think whoever did this planned on Doug spreading the virus to us once he arrived on Mars. That mission was partly successful. His daughter Celestia has the virus and is now in quarantine with her family. She may die. We may all die.”

  Doug studied the faces before him. A few showed genuine concern, Enright among them. But Wilcox, Sanders, Poli and Winterman only displayed anger. And most of the others looked confused.

  Doug wanted to scream at them. He wanted to lash out, beat them all to death one by one until somebody admitted he’d done it. But Dr. Wellon had explained on the way over that he needed to push his emotions aside. He needed to think clearly, maintain his focus.

  The vid suddenly activated, the screens in the commons broadcasting an emergency transmission from Earth. It showed Devereaux looking at the camera. He said: “Our nation’s leaders have determined that I should be shut down. They believe I am behind these God hacks and they think if I no longer exist, the hacks will stop. They’ve given me less than twenty-four hours to surrender myself.”

  As Devereaux continued his message and Doug realized what he intended to do, he found himself saying, “no” over and over, a kind of mantra, a chant that could somehow stop Devereaux from taking this drastic action.

  When Devereaux went still, the two robots ripped him apart. A cry escaped Doug’s lips and Dr. Wellon put her arm around his shoulder, pulling him into an embrace. He held her arm as he stared at the violent destruction of Devereaux’s robotic shell. Could he really have ended himself this way? Doug recalled that he had talked about it with Quark back when various scientists discussed observing his thought processes. Quark had stopped them before, but he was on Mars now. Was he seeing this? How was he taking it?

  Doug pulled his eyes away from the horror and glanced at Dr. Wellon’s face. She frowned, a muscle in her jaw firing as she watched the screens. Her arm tightened, squeezing him in a vise grip until he gasped.

  “Sorry,” she said, letting go. She clenched her hands into fists and her body shook ever so slightly, as if she were about to launch herself at the miners. Every instinct made Doug want to run, but he managed to stay still.

  The robots melted Devereaux’s “brain” into a gray-green puddle.

  “Yeah!” Wilcox said.

  “Shut up,” Enright commanded as the screens went dark.

  “But he deserved to die,” Poli said. Sanders and Winterman murmured their agreement, while Wilcox caught sight of Dr. Wellon’s face and backed up a step.

  “You,” said Dr. Wellon, “you did this.”

  “We had nothing to do with it,” Enright said.

  “Your kind did it. You forced him to choose between slavery and death. So he took the only option left to him—death as freedom.”

  “I respected him,” Enright said.

  “Let me make this clear,” said Dr. Wellon. “If we die, we won’t die alone. Some of us have already advocated an attack against you. After this, I don’t know if cooler heads will prevail.”

  Doug startled. Dr. Wellon hadn’t mentioned anything about an attack.

  “We have managed,” Dr. Wellon continued, “to dissuade them so far. But now that Devereaux is gone and especially if the virus spreads to the rest of the colony, we may not be able to hold them back. I personally won’t attempt to persuade them otherwise.”

  “We’re not afraid of you,” Wilcox said.

  “You should be,” said Doug. “They’re not just scientists. They fought the Elite Ops to a draw. They’re stronger, faster and a hell of a lot smarter than you. And if they want to kill you, you won’t be able to stop them.”

  “Like you would know.”

  “I fought with them on Earth once,” Doug said, conscious of the pride in his voice. “I know. And if they’re all gonna die anyway, why not take revenge on their killers?”

  “We had nothing to do with this,” Enright said. “At least, most of us didn’t.”

  “Doug is right,” Dr. Wellon said. “What you have done, what one or more of you have done, is attempted genocide, the extinction of a whole species. If that’s what ultimately happens, some of us will not go quietly.”r />
  Dr. Wellon glared at the miners, a blush forming on her cheeks. Doug felt a mix of emotion: anger, fear, confusion and despair. He missed Devereaux, but then he’d missed Devereaux for months now anyway. I shouldn’t be sad. Devereaux would tell me not to be sad. He told me often in the past year that he would choose his own time to depart. But I thought he meant some distant time, many years down the road. It feels like losing my father—my real father, since I never knew my biological one—like a part of me has died with the great man and forever afterward I’ll be incomplete, a remnant of the man Devereaux made me.

  But the fact of Devereaux’s death had enormous consequences not just to Earth but to Mars as well. He was the one they’d looked to for answers to those seemingly impossible questions. What would humanity do now?

  Who would save Celestia?

  “One of us will check in with Doug every day,” Dr. Wellon said. “It would behoove you to treat him well. In any event, he’s not the one who infected you. So if any harm comes to him, you will regret it. Understood?”

  They nodded.

  “All right,” Enright said. “Break’s over. Back to work.”

  Doug watched them as they slowly dispersed. Most of them avoided his eye, keeping their heads down. Wilcox, Poli, Winterman and Sanders stood for a moment facing him, letting him know they weren’t afraid. Then they too walked away. One or more of them was a killer. Doug still suspected Wilcox, but he was confused by the man’s attitude. Dr. Wellon was right. Why would the killer draw attention to himself?

  Maybe Wilcox was just a blowhard but that didn’t mean the killer couldn’t be one of his associates.

  Chapter 35

  Jeremiah knew Scott Wilson would hide at White Knight Security’s corporate headquarters so he decided to save Wilson for last and instead directed the jet-copter to Anderlin Everest’s home, which happened to be the closest. The head of Infinite Wealth Investments would undoubtedly have Elite Ops troopers protecting him as well. Now that there was a warrant out for his arrest, Jeremiah would have limited time to carry out his mission.

  Gobbling a few energy bars, he drank a gallon of nutri-water on the way, feeling every vibration, every electric pulse of the copter as it sped toward its target. While he rested on the floor, he attempted to discern what other abilities he might have, what other sensations he might possess. He closed his eyes and hummed, the sound bouncing off the walls and returning to him. Absorbing the vibrations through his forehead, he could sense the volume of space around him. He didn’t know the size precisely but he’d probably be able to fine-tune that ability with practice, if he had enough time.

  He wondered if he could still be called human or if his recent changes had pushed him beyond that state of being into some new sort of creature. He felt human, though he also felt different than he ever had before, ready to explode outward into action, into movement for the pure joy of it.

  As the copter neared Everest’s gated mansion, the broadcast of Devereaux’s destruction played on one of the screens: a ghastly scene that should have infuriated him but for some reason didn’t. He’d suspected Devereaux might decide to end his existence but he hadn’t thought it would be so dramatic, so designed to elicit anger at the country’s leaders.

  Even though he mourned the loss of Devereaux and realized that finding a cure in time for Curtik would now be difficult, he knew he’d been given a gift: the understanding that there could be no turning back now. Without the safety net that Devereaux offered, Jeremiah needed to see this through to completion. He could not fail, for if he did, there might be no one else to expose the truth, whatever that truth might be.

  He programmed the copter to land on the street outside Everest’s compound so the Elite Ops would know he was coming. After it settled down in an open space, he shut down the copter and secured it, then activated the vid drone and headed for Everest’s house.

  He hadn’t bothered to check the security systems; he’d only made certain Everest was still at home. No need for stealth any longer. No need for scanners or scatterers or dampening fields or camo-fatigues. He relied on his senses: sight, hearing, smell, some sort of primitive sonar and his increasing sensitivity to electro-magnetic impulses.

  He saw no guards outside Everest’s mansion. And although he sensed power emanations from inside the building, they weren’t as intense as he’d expected. A well-placed kick opened the front door. He ran inside as three Elite Ops troopers fired, scattering pulses that bathed the area in red, pulses designed to kill, not maim. But by using the scatter setting, the Elite Ops had diffused the pulses’ power. He felt only a current of energy that his body absorbed.

  He leapt to his left, ignoring the odor of rotting flesh from the troopers’ poisonous gas defenses, and kicked out at the head of a trooper, knocking the man off his feet. Springing to his right, he slammed the heel of his palm into the next trooper’s helmet, then spun around and dove forward, launching himself at the third trooper, brushing aside the Las-rifle as he hit the man in the chest. He pulled the Las-rifle free of the trooper’s grasp and spun again, adjusting the settings on the weapon as he fired.

  Two purple pulses resulted in two unconscious troopers. A third pulse and the final trooper stayed down as well. Less than five seconds had elapsed since he’d entered the house.

  Jeremiah stood still, listening to the whine of the troopers’ power packs, seeing only the three troopers on their backs, no other threats. Sprinting up the stairs to the second floor, he moved down the hallway toward the master bedroom. Entering, he sensed more electro-magnetic pulses behind a closed door. He opened that and found a room empty of people: only a few screens and several large data cubes.

  Major Payne’s image appeared on one of the screens. “Jeremiah,” he said, “this can’t continue. We anticipated your move and managed to evacuate Everest before you arrived. You’d better leave immediately. More Elite Ops troopers are on the way. And this time they won’t be playing nice. We’ll blow up the whole building if we have to.”

  Jeremiah stared at the image. How could they have removed Everest so quickly? He hadn’t even thought of coming after Everest until he left Hathaway’s place. Had they put in place an emergency rescue plan some time ago? Or were they lying?

  He closed his eyes and hummed, feeling for the return vibrations. The room’s parameters sketched themselves on his forehead. He couldn’t be certain, but he believed there were no hidden access points here.

  “What are you doing?” Major Payne asked.

  Jeremiah grabbed the data cubes and left the room. Humming to himself, he moved about the second floor, finding nothing out of the ordinary. But he still sensed electro-magnetic power, too much for what the house ought to be exuding. It came from below.

  A dampening field.

  He descended the stairs to the main level and sensed the power beneath his feet growing stronger. Finding the door to the basement locked, he kicked it open and went down the stairs two at a time.

  Everest stood in the center of a rec room, partially shielded by his wife, pulling her close to him as he pointed a Las-pistol at Jeremiah. Everest’s wife had her arms wrapped around a young girl in front of her. All three looked terrified.

  “Are you going to kill my daddy?” the girl asked.

  “Put the weapon down,” said Jeremiah, “or I’ll take it away from you.”

  Everest dropped the Las-pistol.

  “No,” Jeremiah said to the girl, “I’m not going to hurt your father. I just want to ask him some questions. I just want the truth.” He held up a hypo-pad. “Truth drugs, that’s all.”

  Stepping forward, he grabbed the Las-pistol and shot the generator that produced the dampening field. He placed the pad on Everest’s neck, checked to make sure the vid drone was broadcasting, then asked about the coalition of people involved in modifying and distributing the virus. He barely registered the wife and daughter shrin
king away from him, backing into a corner.

  Everest confirmed what Jeremiah and Devereaux had suspected. Hathaway, Fowler, Wilson and Tompkins had joined forces in an attempt to save the world from the virus. But they’d known the plan would be controversial so they’d kept it secret. And Everest insisted there was never any insidious purpose behind their actions.

  “We couldn’t figure out how to modify the virus without these unwanted side effects,” he said. “The other strains Hathaway and Fowler created were even more dangerous.”

  “So Fowler worked with Hathaway?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what was your role?”

  “I funded the research and provided the supercomputers needed to do the calculations and stabilize the necessary permutations. We required a strain of the virus that would survive attachment to the hybrid seeds.”

  Jeremiah pointed to the interface Everest wore on his temple. “I want you to broadcast all the data you have on the project on an open channel and I want you to do it now.”

  Like Hathaway, Everest resisted. His jaws clenched, his hands became fists and he began to shake as his muscles locked.

  Jeremiah shook his head. “Damn your secrets.”

  He slapped another hypo-pad on Everest’s neck, noting with satisfaction Everest’s wince. He hoped the double dose wouldn’t be too harmful to Everest’s brain but he was tired of the man’s intransigence. Waiting a few seconds for the drugs to enter Everest’s bloodstream, Jeremiah repeated his command.

  Everest fell forward, his eyes glazing over. His daughter screamed. Jeremiah grabbed Everest before he hit the floor and laid him on his back. He decided the man was complying, broadcasting his secrets to the world via his interface.