Brian O'Grady - Hybrid

Amanda heard and felt someone give the command to take her. Three agents sprung from their hiding positions and started sprinting towards her. Two more gunned their cars to block her Jeep. She hesitated only a moment and then hit them all with a concentrated blast of mental energy. It was only a tiny fraction of what she was capable of, but it was more than enough to knock them unconscious. She left the video feed running. She had an agent to her left, one to her right, and in one behind her; all three had landed where she hit them. Both of the drivers had managed to slam their sedans into parked cars, and aside from being unconscious, were otherwise okay. Amanda turned to gather her things and then said good-bye to her loyal and reliable Jeep. She slowly and deliberately climbed out into the snow. She turned towards the camera so that they could plainly see her and then walked to each of the three agents and took their handguns and IDs. Unclipping the radio from the last man’s belt, she hit the transmit button.

“They’re not dead,” she said. “But they very well could have been.” She waited for a reply.

It took half a minute for a voice to answer. “What do you want, Amanda?” the voice asked without introduction.

“First, don’t put me in a position where I have to hurt people again.” Her mind searched for the voice and found its owner in a Denver high-rise. It was quite a stretch, but she could just see him as well as a dozen other agents listening and watching her image on a monitor. “You’re an assistant director, aren’t you, Mr. Benedict?”

“Would you like to tell me how you know that, Amanda?” His voice was calm, but all around him people were scrambling, trying to coordinate the movements of other agents.

“No, I don’t think I will. But I will tell you that if I feel another FBI agent within five miles of me, you may not get them back in one piece.” Mittens was on his feet and pacing through her mind. She watched as Benedict waved his arms, stopping the efforts to trap her. “Thank you, Ron. Now, I want you to leave the Flynns and me alone. My patience has worn thin. If I sense anyone following me, Greg, or Lisa, I will punish them, and I will hold you responsible. Am I clear?”

“I’m not in a position to do that,” Benedict said. This was true. The order to take Amanda into custody had come directly from the White House.

“Mr. Benedict, I suggest you put yourself in that position. Tell the director, so he can tell the president what happened here tonight. Let them know what could have happened here as well, because next time it will.”

The agent beneath her began to stir, and she restrained him. She wondered for a moment if a more dramatic demonstration of her ability was in order. She decided against it, for the time being. “I have no desire to hurt anyone, or be taken into custody.”

“This has nothing to do with what happened six years ago. We need your help.” Benedict alone knew why they had to take Amanda, and he had been ordered to keep that secret.

“You don’t need my help,” Amanda had to restrain the minds of two more agents; it was time to be going.

“People are dying, Amanda,” Benedict said gently.

“I’m not responsible for that.” Amanda could tell that he knew that; the name Klaus Reisch floated through his consciousness. “You’re too late; everyone here either is or will soon be infected. I can’t help them anymore; pass that on to Martin.” The realization that all these people were going to die suddenly struck her, and for the first time in seven years, she felt a stab of guilt. “Back off, and I will take care of this. After it’s done, we can talk about what I can do for Nathan Martin.”

“We can take care of the German. Come in and help us now.” Benedict had to try to get her to surrender, even though he knew she wouldn’t.

She shook her head. “You have no idea what he’s capable of. He will kill you all if it suits his need or his fancy, and you have a better chance of stopping me than him.”

The video camera exploded as Amanda dropped the radio receiver and walked away.

“So all this is about a book written by a discredited author more than half a century ago. Excuse my sarcasm, Doctor, but I find that a little hard to believe,” General McDaniels said as their Suburban screamed down the dark streets of Washington.

“It’s not about The Population Bomb per se. It’s the theory behind the book: Paul Ehrlich theorized that the earth can sustain a finite number of human beings before a series of events was initiated that would ultimate lead to our extinction. He made a number of dire predictions if worldwide conditions weren’t changed. All of them proved to be inaccurate, but that didn’t stop his ideas from entering the consciousness of scientific thought. People were influenced by his theories.”

“So Avanti was a disciple.”

“Disciple is too strong a word. Ehrlich believed something and shaped facts to fit that belief; Jaime would never accept that intellectual dishonesty,” Martin said.

“So you are saying that there are facts to back this outlandish theory?” McDaniels was finally surrendering to the laws of momentum by bracing himself within the careening vehicle.

“I don’t think you fully understand Avanti, General. He’s not insane, or some nut with an idea. He is a true believer and not because he blindly accepts what he has been told or has read.” The car suddenly swerved around a corner throwing Martin against the window. “To tell you the truth, I’m not entirely convinced that he’s wrong. In many ways, our species is in as much danger as you and I are right now.”

“Sergeant, I told you to get us there quickly, but I did mean alive,” McDaniels yelled to the driver.

“Sorry sir, but we are being followed. Fairly sophisticated but not aggressive.” The sergeant answered without emotion or taking his eyes off of the road.

Martin wheeled around to look out the rear window but was blinded by the headlights of the trailing Suburban. “Who would be following us?”

“Any number of people, some good, some not so good. It will be handled.” McDaniels didn’t bother turning around and gave Martin a moment to return to his seat.” So you are a believer in this pseudoscience as well?”

“I wouldn’t label it as a pseudoscience,” Martin said nervously as he slid back into his seat.

“It’s become one. When I hear the same facts quoted by radical environmentalists and gun-toting isolationists, I have a tendency to discount them.”

“Wow, with a philosophy like that, how did you ever get through your confirmation hearings?” Martin scoffed. “People basically suck; excuse my French. They will use any tool at their disposal to advance their own personal agenda. Facts don’t lie, people do, and when you pull all those facts together, the future becomes a very scary place. I’m not just talking about global warming; I’m talking about the loss of species diversity, deforestation, the depletion of natural resources — the list is as long as your arm, and each one of those inconvenient facts has an impact on human survival, whether we believe them or not.”

“I believe in our ability to survive; it is the thing that we do best,” McDaniels answered simply.

“Then you must stink at what you do, because your job is to make sure our enemies don’t survive,” Martin laughed sarcastically again.

“My job is not to kill; my job is to protect the United States.”

“Then how are you going to protect it from the seven billion incubators that inhabit this planet and the tendency of pathogens to mutate?”

“That’s your job.”

“Well, I’ll be the first to admit that I stink at my job. We have almost no natural defenses, and what little science can do will be too little too late. HIV, Bird-flu, SARS, NIM, and all the others that came before them matured within human tissue. The greater the mass of human tissue, the greater the probability that something really nasty will develop. There are some very serious-minded people who believe that we are on the verge of a massive natural pandemic, the results of which would be death tolls in the billions. And with the way societies and economies have become so interdependent, such a disruption would lead to famines and wars severe enough to finish the rest of us off.”