The Last Mayor Box Set 3

by Michael John Grist

  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 anyway.

  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 sugges
t 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 comatose 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."

  He paused and made eye contact with Olan Harrison. The old man showed no surprise. "Again, it's a lot of supposition. Is your basis for any of this solid?"

  "We have reports from the coma patients we picked up." James While made another gesture, and holograms of brain wave function appeared floating beside him. "They're already exhibiting signals that we can detect, tied into steep changes at the cellular level. Their brains are changing, their DNA is changing, and it looks to both myself and the Logchain like the wind-up to a second blast." He took a breath. "In essence, it seems they're being rewired to act as transmitters for the line, to further spread their own infection."

  Silence resounded. Eyes around the room flashed left and right.

  "So if this is true, then the end is coming," Harrison said, contemplatively. "How long do we have, and what do you suggest we do?"

  James While paced. "I can't predict how long, though we should have better data soon. I've already assigned our Bordeaux facility to begin the enormous task of tracking every coma-triggered person on the planet. Expertise and equipment are currently en route. I'm also launching an unprecedented review of the SEAL, to root out whomever was involved in this plot."

  He let that hang. They would surely know already that he was looking into them all, and be expecting this. Perhaps they wouldn't have thought it would be stated so nakedly.

  "You're investigating us," Harrison said flatly.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. Drill deep, son. Dig the bastards out. Don't let anything stand in your way."

  While nodded. "In the meantime, I would like to put motions before the Heads for an enormous resource requisition. I believe we need to invest in shielding equipment that will allow a portion of humanity to withstand the next hydrogen line blast, in the event it cannot be prevented. Lifeboats, if you will, to ride out the coming storm. Currently that kind of shielding equipment only partially exists, used to minimize ill effects at the Logchain. We will need a prodigious investment of qualified human capital to progress the technology to a practical stage. At the same time we have to begin screening lists of survivors to place into these lifeboats."

  Harrison smacked his gums. "You want us to fetch the people and build the Ark before we even know if it will float."

  "That's right. We have to assume that the technology will catch up in time. To do anything less will be to leave the response too late. And I'm suggesting a dozen Arks, with three thousand per Ark. Those numbers should allow us to restart a modest level of civilization once the threat is passed. That is the level of thinking that is now required; planning for the continuity of our race. Currently we have several underground facilities that might serve, but we must build others, beginning today. I am sending projected sites out to you all now, with required roles."

  Silence met him. Eyes dropped as they opened their attachments.

  James watched them. His requisitions abandoned thousands of ongoing projects, but they'd seen the footage from the Multicameral Array. This was real.

  "Do it," Harrison said. "The SEAL is at your disposal. Start your preparations."

  James While nodded. He already had. Now his plane for the Logchain was waiting.

  * * *

  Joran Helkegarde slipped in and out of nightmarish sleep, punctuated by the hammering of the helicopter's blades and Sovoy's voice telling him to, "Shut up, stop crying, nobody cares." He saw bodies transforming again, and his Array in chaos, and all his one hundred subjects gone, while a nuclear bomb burst across the sky in his mind.

  The Array had looked so beautiful in the snow. One hundred young men swimming on an ocean of thought. Thought soup, Sandbrooke had said, but now Sandbrooke was dead, and he'd done it.

  His arrogance.

  He thought back to what While had said at the end of their conversation, with the knife still hanging over his eyes.

  "I don't trust you, but I don't have the luxury of writing you off. Find a way to stop a second blast and you'll have a chance. Show me how brilliant you can be, or this will be your life, and your legacy."

  Joran had looked past the knife hovering over his face and seen the lifeline being offered. He'd jumped on it greedily.

  The line had cut out, but the message resonated. While's offer pushed the pain and self-pity back, made the horrible visions of the Array fade. He started to think clearly, in methodical steps.

  Someone had used his Multicameral Array to launch an unprecedented attack on the world. They'd piggybacked on the first ever successful transmission from the human mind onto the hydrogen line, warping his moment of greatest triumph into his greatest failure.

  How?

  Now those moments came back to him, and he pushed the weakness away. Guilt would help no one now. He called to Sovoy, and kept calling until Sovoy woke up and came over, cursing and angry. But soon Sovoy sat down, and listened, and the light came back on in his eyes. They began to brainstorm. Ideas flowed, and a working theory started to form.

  The transfer off the helicopter happened but he barely noticed, locked into discussion with Sovoy as they wheeled his gurney out and down, carted deep underground. Befor
e they were shoved into a shared cell off a plain white hallway, he asked for paper, pens, and to speak to James While.

  Half an hour after that the call from James While came in, carried on a laptop screen.

  He was standing in what looked to be the empty cabin of a luxury jet. Oval windows studded the rounded walls left and right, through which blue sky showed.

  "What do you have?" he asked.

  "It wasn't just Hello," Joran said hurriedly, keen to get it all out and prove he could be useful again. It was guesswork built on existing knowledge and hearsay, but it included information at its base that no one else had access to. "The transmission had to have been more. The simple binary toggle of yes/no on the line couldn't have done what we saw; not when the signal is made up of human thought already, not when we were just adding focus at a local level."

  While's face remained impassive. "You're telling me something I already know. I need more than that."

  "No, wait. You didn't know that. How could you? You may have assumed it was a complex code, but you didn't know that. Assumptions will get us all killed."

  While's expression hardened. "You're wasting my time."

  "Piers Sandbrooke," Joran blurted. "He's the only person who could have double-spoofed the transmission up the data spines. Nobody else had access."

  "Anybody could have hacked that system."

  Joran shook his head so hard his arm throbbed. "Not possible. There was no intranet to the data spines, no circuits to hack, and only myself, Sovoy and Sandbrooke could have pre-loaded the signal in, locked by biometrics. It would have meant going round to every pod and typing the code in manually, and no one could do that without being seen. Every pod in the underhall was staffed at all times, so it's impossible."

  While looked away for a moment, tapped on a keyboard they couldn't see, then looked back.

  "Those were security measures you never reported, not SEAL-approved. Still, it doesn't explain the fact that Sandbrooke died in the arena."

  "So he was willing to die for his cause. That's worth knowing, surely?"