Nicholas Smith - Extinction Age

“Tower 4, stand by for orders,” the operator finally replied.

Fitz brought the scope back to his eye. The ship plowed through the water at full speed, whitecaps bursting around the bow. Echo 1 intercepted it first. The crew chief didn’t hesitate. They opened up with the M240 and sprayed a line of projectiles across the ship’s path. Echo 2 and 3 flanked the destroyer as it shot by, circling and giving chase.

Fitz followed the ship’s progress with his scope. It looked like it was going to hit the eastern peninsula of the island. “Come on,” he murmured. “Stop, you son of a bitch.”

He watched, astonished, as the new threat continued barreling toward the island. That was the thing about the apocalypse; you never knew what would happen next.

The mechanical whine of gas-powered turbines pulled Fitz from his thoughts. Echo 1 had opened up on the bow of the Truxtun . Whoever was steering the ship didn’t change course. The destroyer charged right through the hail of gunfire. Echo 2 and Echo 3 unleashed a barrage on the port and starboard sides of the ship.

Why would a Navy ship ram the fucking island?

If they wanted resources, all they had to do was point their Tomahawk missiles and Lieutenant Colonel Jensen would wave a white flag.

Nothing made sense… until the ship shot by the shoreline and continued on a straight course toward the Connecticut shoreline. The Blackhawks seemed just as surprised as Fitz. They hovered over the water like oversized bees, their blades buzzing as they waited for orders.

Then Fitz understood. The ship had never been on a collision course at all—there was no one at the helm. The Truxtun was truly just a ghost ship.

Fitz watched the destroyer continue toward mainland as the choppers returned to base. When the ship was only a speck on the horizon, he collapsed on the stool, took in a long breath, and exhaled.

“Command, Tower 4. Anyone got any whiskey?”

Kate held out her arms as Ellis zipped up the back of her suit. Five minutes had passed since the alarms had stopped screaming, but the sound was still reverberating in her ears.

“A destroyer?” Ellis asked. “With no one behind the wheel? How the hell does that make any sense?”

Kate frowned. “Does anything make sense anymore?” Mentally, she was beyond exhausted, but she needed her wits for what came next.

Kate was beginning to hate the lab. It was yet another reminder of what she’d created here. The other labs beyond the glass windows were dark. There were no scientists in CBR suits huddling around computer monitors in the other levels or robotic arms retrieving samples in the centrifuge. They’d lost most of their support staff in the attack, and the survivors had been given time to regroup. Kate and Ellis were the only ones determined—or crazy—enough to be here today.

“Not going to lie,” Ellis said, waving his badge over the security terminal. “I’m excited to get back to it. I’ve been thinking about another bioweapon and I have an idea.”

The glass doors whispered apart and Kate strolled past the empty lab stations. Banks of LED lights clicked on simultaneously and the room lit up with a clean, white glow. The absence of the other scientists chilled her even further in her already freezing suit.

“I have an idea, too,” Kate said after a long pause.

“You first,” Ellis said. He pulled a stool across the floor to her station.

Kate sat, keyed in her credentials, and moused over to a research paper she’d read earlier.

“What do we know about the Variants’ weaknesses?” Kate asked.

Ellis glanced up at her, his brow furrowed. “Is that a rhetorical question?”

“No. I’m being serious.”

He shrugged. “We know they’re sensitive to light. That’s about it.”

“That’s why I’ve been reading about optogenetics,” Kate said. She scooted her stool over and pointed at the PDF on screen. “Know anything about it?”

“Only what Wikipedia taught me,” he chuckled. “One of my old classmates worked in the field, and I didn’t want to sound like an idiot the last time we had dinner. I used my phone to look up the details in the cab ride across Manhattan.”

Kate would have laughed a month ago, but she didn’t feel much like laughing now. She forced a smile he probably couldn’t even see.

“I’m not an expert on it either, but I know that light has been used to control neural activity through genetic targeting. Before everything that’s happened, researchers made breakthroughs in controlling the behavior of animals—”

Ellis interrupted her by shaking his helmet. “You’re not thinking what I think you’re thinking, are you? You were the one who said the Variants aren’t animals we can control.”

“I’m not talking about controlling them. I’m talking about killing them,” Kate said, her voice cutting. She shifted her gaze from the computer to his eyes. “You don’t need to remind me what I’ve said in the past.”

He shied away, slouching half a degree in his chair. “Sorry.”

Kate was silent for a moment. There was so much going on in her head she was having a hard time keeping it straight. She pawed her visor in a futile attempt to rub her tired eyes, forgetting she even had her helmet on.

“The main problem is weaponizing it. Most of the applications require light-sensitive probes to be implanted in the brains of subjects,” she said.

“That’s not exactly an option.”

“No, but what if we could use the same concept to kill them? To exploit their weakness to light.”

Ellis frowned and said, “What’s the difference between shooting them with bullets or shooting them with some sort of light gun? Both require soldiers, and last I checked the world was running very short on those.”

Kate thought of Beckham. No matter what she designed, someone would have to test the weapon in the field. The idea of him risking his life out there again made her heart flutter.

“What’s your idea?” Kate asked. She turned away from her monitor, crossed her arms and waited.

“I’ve been so focused on the epigenetic changes the Variants are going through, I’ve neglected the obvious,” Ellis said, talking quickly and waving his hands. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of this weeks ago. I was just so stuck on the—”

“Slow down,” Kate said.

“Right, sorry,” he replied after a pause. “Remember how the stem cells are proliferating at a rapid rate?”

“I do. They’re responsible for their healing capabilities, immune system health, and rapid transformation.” Kate tried to guess where he was going with this, but she was too exhausted to speculate. He didn’t wait for her questions anyway.

“Well, what if we isolate a sample of bone marrow stems cells from one of the Variants? We could run it through the HTS system and look for a protein that’s only expressed in the infected. Then we could develop antibodies that would target their stem cells and deliver something to knock them out,” he said. His voice carried a sense of awe. “It would only work on Variants, since the protein would be specific to them.”

Kate considered the idea. It wasn’t much different from what she had created with VX9H9. The bioweapon had worked on only those infected with the Hemorrhage virus. But this time whatever they ended up developing would need to kill every one of the creatures. There was no margin for error.

Ellis studied Kate for a reaction, his eyes bright behind his visor.

“So you think we should use a technology like targeted drug delivery?” Kate asked.

“Precisely,” Ellis said, nodding. “Think it might work?”

“Not sure,” Kate said. “But I like the idea.”