Jonathan Maberry - The Dragon Factory

“No kidding.”

“This is time critical for another reason,” Church said. “We’ve just started picking up the threads of something that could be a significant threat. That’s Threat with a capital T . We’re probably already coming into this late-that’s the nature of these things-but with all of my people dodging the NSA or gone to ground we could fall completely behind the curve. I need the Vice President to call off the dogs so we can get back to work.”

Brierly sighed. “What do you want me to do?”

“What do your loyalties suggest you do?”

“Switching jobs sounds good right now. I hear they’re hiring at Best Buy.”

Church crunched his cookie, drank some water, waited.

“It’s not like I can strong-arm a doctor and force him to revive the President. He’s in recovery now, but there are protocols.”

“Yes, and Brushfire is one of them.”

“I’m going to lose my job over this.”

“Not if the President takes control before we lose MindReader.”

Brierly was a long time thinking it through. Church had time for a second cookie.

“Okay,” Brierly said, “but when the Commander in Chief is back on the checkerboard I’m going to dump all the blame on you.”

“Not a problem.”

“And what if we fail? What if the Veep gets control of your records?”

“That might require alternatives you cannot hear from me. Not even unofficially.”

Brierly cursed.

“Linden,” said Church quietly, “this is not a fight of my choosing, and I don’t know why the VP is risking so much here, but we cannot let MindReader be taken. It’s your job to make sure I don’t need to get creative while trying to keep it.”

“ ‘Creative’ doesn’t sound like a very nice option.”

“It isn’t,” said Church. “So let’s both do what we need to do to keep that option off the table. I’ll do what I can for as long as I can, but I’d like to hear a clear weather report from you soon.”

“Okay. I’ll find the chief of surgery and see if I can appeal to his patriotism.”

“You know my number,” Church said, and disconnected.

He set the phone down on his desk blotter. He laid his hands on either side of it and sat quietly in the stillness of his office.

The Deck

Saturday, August 28, 10:16 A.M.

Time Remaining on Extinction Clock: 97 hours, 44 minutes E.S.T.

“They’re landing,” Otto said as he set down the phone.

He and Cyrus stood in the command center of the Deck. All around them hundreds of technicians were busy at computer workstations. A second tier of workstations was built onto a metal veranda that circled the central area. The clackity-clack of all those fingers on all those keys was music to Cyrus’s ears.

Below the command center, visible through clear glass panels in the floor, were two isolated cold rooms. The left-hand one was crowded with fifty networked 454 Life Sciences sequencers. Technicians in white self-contained smart suits worked among the computers, constantly checking their functions and monitoring every minute change. The right-hand room looked like a brewery in which vast tanks worked around the clock to grow viruses.

The tank directly below Cyrus’s feet was dedicated to mass-producing a weaponized version of the human papillomavirus that had been genetically altered to target Hispanics. Sure, there was crossover to some white population because racial purity was-sadly, as far as Cyrus and Otto were concerned-more myth than truth, but the rate of cervical cancer for female Hispanics was 85 percent and the crossover to Caucasians only 6 percent. The synthetic growth medium they were currently using allowed for a 400 percent increase in growth time. The tanks had been running so long now that Otto estimated that they would have enough to use it to launch the second phase of the Extinction Wave in sixteen weeks rather than the previously anticipated thirty months. Cyrus only wished that they’d settled on this new method last year so that it would have been ready with the rest of the first phase.

Thinking about it made Cyrus want to scream, to run and shout with joy.

“We should close up,” advised Otto.

“I know; I know.” Cyrus waved his hand peevishly. “It’s just that I hate to do it.”

“We can’t let the Twins see-”

Cyrus silenced him with a look.

“They probably won’t even come in here.” However, Cyrus knew that Otto was quite right. Taking chances was never good at the best of times, but with the Extinction Wave so close-so wonderfully, delightfully close-nothing could be left to chance. And neither of them trusted the Twins.

“I wish we could bring them in,” said Cyrus.

Otto turned away so Cyrus wouldn’t see him roll his eyes. This was an argument that had started before the Twins had hit puberty, and he and Cyrus had come at it from every possible angle too many times to count.

“Everything in their psych profiles suggests that they would oppose the Wave.”

“I know.”

“Their ideologies are too-”

“I know.”

Otto pursed his lips.

“Mr. Cyrus, their plane is touching down as we speak.”

Cyrus sighed. “Very well, damn it.” He flapped his hand and turned away.

He walked slowly away, hands clasped behind his back, head bowed thoughtfully. At the door he paused and turned to watch as steel panels slid slowly into place to hide the rooms below. Heavy hydraulics kicked in and Cyrus glanced up as shutters rolled into place to hide nearly 80 percent of the technicians. A faux wall rose up to cover a half-mile-long corridor that connected the Deck to the viral storage facility buried under the hot Arizona sands. The whole process took less than three minutes, and when it was completed the room looked small, almost quaint. High-tech to be sure, but on a scale suited only for research rather than mass production. Cyrus sighed again. It depressed him to have to hide this from his own children. Just as it depressed him that his children were such serious disappointments.

“I’ll be in the garden,” he said to Otto. “Bring them to me there.”

Otto bowed and watched him go.

The Deck

Saturday, August 28, 10:22 A.M.

Time Remaining on Extinction Clock: 97 hours, 38 minutes E.S.T.

Paris’s cell rang as their plane was rolling to a stop on the tarmac.

“Yes?” he answered in a musical voice.

“It’s me,” said J. P. Sunderland.

“And-”

“It’s a wash. We hit all of the DMS bases likely to have a Mind-Reader substation, but without an Executive Order to shoot, the best we could manage was a standoff. Actually, kiddo,” Sunderland said, “we have several agents in the hospital and ears are up in local and regional law coast to coast. The Vice President is probably going to get his ass dragged before a subcommittee for this.”

“So,” Paris said with ice, “basically you fucked it up.”

“Basically, yes.”

“You could at least sound contrite.”

“Blow me, snowball,” said Sunderland. There was no heat in his voice; there never was. He was too practiced a game player to let any bad hand of cards, or even a bad run of cards, fracture his cool. “This was a fifty-fifty at best and we all knew that going in. You and your sister called this play. I was against it from the start as you well know. It’s a waste of resources that could have been better used further down the road.”

“We need that system. Without MindReader the money train’s going to slow to a halt, J.P.”

“I’ll practice singing the blues later. Right now it looks like the NSA will be stalled long enough for the power to shift back to the President. And, like I said, we may lose the Vice President over this.”