An Eighty Percent Solution (CorpGov) (48 page)

“Want to give an example, Doctor?”

“Sure
.
Let us say we give a two to patient A, also known as patient zero
.
He’s
the original host
.
Once the disease has spread to a certain point, he can pas
s
the disease to anyone he comes into contact with
—
let’s call them
patients
B1 through B20
.
Note that it passes just like any influenza, mostly large droplets or touch
.
All the B
’
s are contagious when this disease progress
es to a certain point
.
They pass it on to C1,1 through C20,20
, if you can envision the matrix in your head
.
Note that the study I read showed a contagion rate of
twenty
individuals was nominal during normal activities, at least with an agent deadly enough to be effective for
its
original intent
.

“By the time it reache
s
the C hosts
,
the virus has worn out its ability to replicate and is no longer contagious
.
The Cs can’t give it to anyone
.
Note by this time A is dead and ninety percent of Bs are dying
.
The
Cs will have about a seventy percent mortality
.
It worked out to an optimax of about
four hundred
total victims, with an overall mortality rate of
seventy
-
one or
seventy
-
two percent.”

“Only
four hundred
people, eh?” Tony said sourly.

“Yes, sir
.
The risks weren’t worth it
.
Bio weapons then, just as today, are only
a
good way to get the entire deploying country removed from the gene pool
.
They tried to work it up to a three
transfers
or higher
,
but it never scaled
.
Anyway, they passed it on to the black ops folks
.
Never heard of it being used.”

“You do now.”

“Really?”

“Those are all blood samples from people I know,” Sonya said quietly
.
Her eyes barely changed when she heard her own death sentence.

“Are you…”
The doctor looked up to hear the continuous
—
and
,
in this case
,
reassuring
—
whisper of
a
decontamination
particle
flow
coming
down from the ceiling
.

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, Sonya
.
It’d
take months to work out something akin to a vaccination
.
Note I said vaccination, not a cure, and any vaccine has about a two percent disease rate
.
It would just restart a disease
that’ll
die out after two generations
on its own
.”

“I know
.
Still, can you explain why it would manifest differently in each host?”

“
Maybe
because of the catalyst
.
Ah,
your look reminds me
I forgot to share that bit
.
This disease requires a trigger to start its actions
.
No catalyst, no disease
.
It’ll
lie dormant for years waiting
.
Some catalysts can be gengineered to be as common as oxygen, but others can be quite complex
,
such as the specific ethanol combination that makes up Bailey’s w
h
iskey, but not Jack Daniels
.
Others may be just any alcohol
.
If the catalyst possessed the latter’s broadness
,
each set of symptoms would depend on the type of trigger.”

“Doc, I have just two more minor requests and then I’ll consider our debt wiped.”

“Ask away.”

“I need to know which of these samples shows patient zero and what catalyst this particular strain would trigger on.”

“
Give me
two days
.”

* * *
 

Tony sweated despite the November chill
.
He huddled further under the active-camouflage cloak
.
His right hand flexed spasmodically around a machine pistol
,
chosen because its
larger slugs
were more effective
against any of the possible armored targets today than those of a flechette gun
.
Two pair
s
of footsteps closed on his position and
approached within a meter of his position
before veering off
along the fence line
.

The
GAM member
s
knew they
all remained undetected by the simple fact that no cries of alarm pierced the
chill
night air
,
nor
were any
weapons discharged
.
When
Tony
could no longer hear the footfalls
,
he risked lifting his poncho just enough to see the guards at over
100
hundred
meter
s
and
moving away
.
The aerial purr from a hover drone caused Tony to freeze in place
.
Drone visuals focused like some primitive predator, mostly on motion
.
While he couldn’t see it, he could hear it pause and hover in place
.

“Just move on,” Tony thought
.
“Nothing here but a patch of grass
.”

The drone’s sounds finally receded
.
Tony risked
another
quick look to see it floating back the other direction, ignoring the patch of grass that his cloak imitated
.
Three clicks on his mic sounded the all
-
clear.

Martin
and Andrea both came up from their nearly invisible positions
.
Despite the advances in electronic surveillance and visual aids, night remained
a
playground
for
the professional thief
and
saboteur
.
Tony’s team wore black garb under their active camo, either of which offered little for the
natural or electronic
eye to focus on
outside the brightness of day
.

Without talking
,
the three walked
slowly but cautiously
over to the nearby building and began climbing up the patterned stone face
.
Mechanical tools, designed specifically for this mission, gripped the patterns themselves
,
allowing the trio to scale the building
confidently
, if slowly
.
They opened and slid through an unlocked, nondescript fourth floor window
.
Despite always being lit, bathrooms seemed to offer themselves as perfect points of entry with no surveillance, and often less than zero physical security
.
The GAM actively sought them out as entrances
and
exits
.

Tony pointed at the stall second from the end
.
There they set up a dummy on the toilet and stored several sets of emergency equipment
.
Andrea wired an explosive to the stall door so that if it were forced open, the
smoldering ruin would announce a compromised
escape route
.
Martin
changed
clothes while
Tony stood guard
.

Martin
, now wearing a business suit
and a badly faked employee badge
, walked brazenly out of the bathroom, just like a corpie who belonged
.
Tony and Andrea waited until the three clicks over their comms told them the camera outside pointed away
.
Almost as one they sprinted across the hall into its blind spot
.
The camera blithely spun from one side to the other
,
allowing the pair to sprint down the hall to an unmarked door just
twenty meters
from the bathroom
.
All this t
ook
place as
Martin
continued to walk up and around the next corner
.

Andrea gave three clicks on her mic as she opened the simple lock in less than four
-
tenths of a second
.
After they raced in, Tony mostly closed the door, watching the camera through the crack in the door
.
The mindless Cyclops tracked back toward them and then away again
.
Tony clicked thrice and
Martin
sprinted around the corner and through the door.

The janitorial closet, like most of its ilk, measured three meters deep and two across
.
A drain sink hunkered down in the far corner
sporting a faucet that leaked just one drop every few seconds
.
An automated
floor polishing
bot silently occupied its charging cradle
.
Two meters
of industrial shelving neatly displayed bathroom and cleaning products
.
S
even meters
above their head
, a plastic network trough
clothed in
Taste Dynamics
security tape
hung next to
the exposed
ceramcrete
supports from the fifth floor
.

Andrea pointed at an exposed bolt near the ceiling, probably left from the construction of the building a dozen or more years ago
.
Tony nodded and formed a cradle
with
his fingers
.
The tiny Andrea ran with a jump into his hands
.
Tony flung her up
ward,
where she latched onto the support
with one hand much stronger than that of most Olympic gymnasts
.
She
quickly fastened her climbing belt to
the bolt as a working point to hang from
.
Tony bent over and let
Martin
climb up on top of him
.
Andrea and
Martin
worked with
the
smooth and steady speed of seasoned professionals, with every move rehearsed
.
The trickiest part of the operation involved nothing more than two trinkets
eight centimeters
long, bearing an official
Taste Dynamics
seal, artificially weathered to look more than two years old.

The two devices must simultaneously cut each of the unidirectional security optics, in two
precise locations
each
.
“In place,” Tony heard whispered through his earpiece from his crouched position
.

“In place
here
.
Cut in three, two, one, cut.”

“Augustine?”

“Good link on both devices,” she replied from her far distant location
.
“No apparent deception
from
Nanogate
.
Definitely high
-
level information and controls
.
No direct connection to security except a one-way lockdown function, so I can’t poll to see if this link compromised itself.”

“
Mission
complete
.
Wrapping up and returning
.
” Tony grunted quietly as
Martin
shifted his weight
.
Martin
gave him the
thumbs
-
up as
he
dismounted
.
They created a cradle o
f their arms and Andrea disconnected and dropped
from her perch
into it
.