Cliff Ryder - Out of Time

“That’s all for now. Thank you, Mrs. Tempest.”

There was a long pause and Brin wondered if she should shut down the window. Then, “Once you shut down the chat window, don’t open it again. I’ll know if you do.”

“How will you know?” she typed, half-smiling.

“You don’t look good in red. You should have worn your blue pajamas.”

Brin began to shake, her teeth rattling as her eyes darted about the room. The computer camera.

It had to be on. She shut down the computer as quickly as she could and then shoved off from the desk hard enough to nearly topple the chair. Once she was up, she whipped off her robe and threw it over the computer and its small camera, just in case.

The weight of what she’d learned sat heavy on her chest. Alex had always seemed so healthy. She shook her head, knowing that thoughts like that were useless. She was a scientist, she knew that things like this struck without warning.

She tried to reason it and then realized there was no reasoning. It was what it was.

Brin started to cry.

“There’s an advantage to being an electronics importer,” Liang explained as he slipped out of the chair and let Alex slide in. “You get to know all sorts of electronics engineers, technicians, pro-grammers—you know the type.”

“I guess so,” Alex said as he leaned forward.

After rising and having a quick meal, he’d started in on the MRIS files from Room 59. Liang had been out all morning and returned with a small jump drive full of files and data of his own. He was the local asset and it was his responsibility to gather as much intel on the target facility as possible. He’d come through admirably in very short order, and Alex appreciated it. He was on a shorter schedule than even his superiors knew, and all his plans were geared toward a quick hit and quicker exit.

Spread out on the computer screen was a series of documents. Each one, when maximized, was a blueprint, or a wiring diagram. The entire plan for the MRIS compound had been captured digitally.

“I don’t suppose these plans for the building just happened to be on the Internet?” Alex commented drily. “I hope there’s no trail back to the leak?”

“No trail. A friend of mine was kind enough to procure them for me. I must say, he had to go through quite a few less than standard channels to get them. You can view several different versions, calling up just the electronics plans, locations of the security components, all exits, et cetera.”

Alex brought up the security blueprints, scanned the location of all the cameras, motion detectors. He nodded slowly. It seemed too easy, and this worried him a little. Room 59 operations usually targeted high-level security risks. One thing that was standard was the quality of the enemy. Alex never trusted anything that seemed easy, because he knew that taking anything for granted was the fastest way to mission failure—

usually on a catastrophic level.

“It won’t take me long to memorize these,” he said after a couple of moments. “At least the portions I need to be familiar with. The sticky part will be identifying and allowing for any changes in the security clearances at the checkpoints. How recent are these?”

“As of six days ago,” Liang said.

“I’d like to go take another look at the place in the daylight. Is that possible?”

“We’ll go tomorrow morning. In the meantime, you can go over the files and these plans. We’ll eat dinner here, and then you can get some rest. This could get tricky. You’ll let me know if there is anything else you need?”

Alex thought for a moment. He considered asking for a pain pill, but decided against it. He wished he’d remembered the damned medication that Britton had prescribed, but on a deeper level he was glad he hadn’t. There was no way to know ahead of time how it might affect his performance or his mind. He could overcome some physical handicaps, but if his brain went fuzzy, he was finished.

“I think I’m all set. Thanks.”

Liang exited quietly, and Alex got to work.

The file on MRIS was thick. A lot of what had been provided wasn’t necessary to his operation, but everyone involved had been thorough, as usual.

On a public level, MRIS was involved in biomedical research, mostly diagnostics. Alex knew that from Brin’s work. They specifically targeted degenerative diseases. The irony of this was not lost on him as his hands trembled over the keys of the laptop. The world looked to MRIS as a leader in the war against disease. Room 59 had uncovered a secondary arm of the corporation. It was unlikely that the stockholders were aware of this particular side. Unlike the main holdings of the company, this entity had a less than stellar rating in interna-tional protocols, which was a polite way of saying that several key figures had been suspected at one time or another of terrorism. Everything has a negative side, and the negative side of biomedical research was that often the technology developed to cure could also infect.

As he read, he was drawn in, fascinated by the technology, and at the same time sickened by the use it was planned for. He thought of Brin. Her name came up more than once on records in the research on this project, but he knew she would never have participated if she’d read what he was reading. He wondered briefly if Hershel Rand was involved, or if he, like Brin, was just being fooled by the benevolent mask behind which his company operated. If he did know—if he was aware of what was coming—then Alex thought he might have to add a personal element to the end of this mission.

The concept read like something out of a science fiction novel. The actual biological research was conducted in labs across the globe, in Beijing, the United States, France and several other locations. Breakthroughs had been made, but, as Brin had patiently explained to him, understanding the breakdown in a cell and finding a way to reverse-engineer the damage on a cellular level were two very different concepts. They knew what broke down in the body when it fell victim to degenerative disease, but not how to provide that same body with the ability to rebuild itself. Once the natural immune system broke down, it was a game of compensation and prolonging the battle, but very seldom was there victory.

In many ways, the human body was a machine and the immune system was what allowed all the other parts to function correctly. Without it, it was only a matter of time until the machine malfunc-tioned on a critical level.

Alex read about the nanoagents MRIS had developed. What was chilling was that, rather than rebuilding cellular structure, the nanoagents could be used to introduce a virus, or a biological contaminant, and speed the process of infection. At the same time, they would continue to battle against anything trying to reverse the effect they sought. It would be like setting loose a hive of bees in a sauna—the cellular structure of a human being could be destroyed in seconds, and the agents could be designed to transfer. Once they introduced a virus, they could also enhance the spread of that virus.

This was the process that Room 59 had discovered underlying the MRIS research. They had also uncovered evidence of a planned test of the process, and it was aimed at a target within the United States. It would not be traceable back to the company, of course. Terrorist groups all over the world would leap at the chance to claim it, but a weapon of this magnitude couldn’t be allowed to flourish in secret, or to be fully tested and put into production. The only thing on Alex’s side was that the research was hidden behind deep security. The scientific community wasn’t even aware the break-through had occurred, and if Alex had a say in it, they never would be. He only hoped that the intel he had on the scheduled test was accurate, and that he would be quick enough to protect Brin.