Technosis: The Kensington Virus (4 page)

“Profiles?”

“We know the virus needs a live data stream – email, flash, text – but what else do we know?”

“Not much, that’s why we want you on board,” she replied.

“Yes, but are there more cases among men or women?”

“Statistically they’re the same.”

“What’s the oldest case?” he asked.

“Let me check,” she said, and typed in a request for data.

A second passed. “According to our records we have not had a case over the age of fifty-five.”

“And the youngest?”

“Just a moment. Twenty, the youngest we have had is twenty. “

“So we have a data virus that hits the vital age ranges. It does not hit the very young or the very old.”

“And?”

“Most communicable diseases hit the immuno-compromised; the oldest and the youngest. The middle range – young adults to older adults – have more effective immune systems; they get sick but tend to survive. Whatever this thing is, it goes after the one group that should have survivors. What happened to the two from the original Kensington outbreak?”

“The two?”

“The two that survived the fight.”

“They survived the fight, but they turned within twenty-four hours. They received messages, as did the responding officers and emergency service personnel.”

Jamie was silent.

“We only have one survivor that we know of who has been exposed to this virus directly and repeatedly.”

“Who?”

“You.” She passed over a set of tags for him.

“What are these?” he asked, looking at the multi-colored plates on a chain.

“Your security clearance, access badges and assignment designator. From now on you are military property and assigned to our division.”

Jamie put on the chain of tags, “What now?”

“Now we have an appointment at the fort.”

CHAPTER 4

FORT MEAD, MARYLAND, DATE CLASSIFED

F
our Star General Thomas Talbot was in a foul mood when Commander Halle arrived with Jamie at the Cyber Warfare Base in Fort Mead, Maryland.

“It’s 1400. I expected you two hours ago,” General Talbot barked.

“Yes sir, sorry sir. We had to wait for the CDC to finish labs to get clearance to travel,” Commander Halle said.

“Those damn civilians are chewing my ass on this one,” the general said and sat down. “So is this our golden boy?”

“He is. This is Dr. Jamie Baxter,” she informed him.

Jamie didn’t know whether to salute or offer his hand. Since he was being spoken of as a non-entity he decided to stand still.

“Any military back ground? Training?”

“File shows none,” Commander Halle confirmed.

“You ever been in a fight?” General Talbot asked.

“Not that I can recall.” Jamie answered.

“Never? Even in school? No bullies that you knocked on their ass or kicked your ass?” the general asked.

“We had the Behavior Amplification Displacers in our schools.” Jamie said.

“B.A.D. was a damn stupid idea,” the general said. “Bunch of wannabe thugs beating themselves. It bred out the survival instinct. We need bullies, they keep us strong and our reflexes sharp.”

Jamie couldn’t disagree with the general more, but B.A.D. also helped to suppress dissent. So all he could do was stand mute.

“Married?” the general asked.

“Divorced, sir.”

“There might be hope for you yet,” the general asserted. “In life Jamie there are always conflicts. What decides victory is the little things. I’m telling you this because the way you test someone comes down to a very simple proposition.”

“And that is, sir?” Jamie asked.

“Sink or swim.”

Jamie’s world went black as strong hands seized him and a hood was forced down over his head.

∞

“General, I must protest,” Commander Halle said as they stood in the observation bay platform.

“Duly noted,” the general remarked.

“He’s our best chance…”

“He’s a useless exception if we can’t do anything with him. The blood tests are negative. Genetic profile is unremarkable. So whatever it is that keeps him from getting the virus isn’t something we can copy, bottle or distribute. That means we need to find out if he is the real deal.”

“Dr. Baxter,” the general’s voice boomed as he spoke into a microphone..

Jamie stood, trussed, restrained and held by two pairs of hands, the hood still firmly pulled over his head.

“Sorry, take the hood off of him,” the general commanded.

Jamie was momentarily blinded by the lights. As his vision cleared he saw he was in a large bay with white walls, a tiled floor and four drains near the center of the tile floor. At the far end of the bay, thirty feet up, was a large glass observation room where the general and Commander Halle stood side by side.

“On the table behind you are a standard issue 9 mm side arm, five bullets and a standard issue field knife. In ninety seconds this room will have twelve turned Kensington virus carriers in it. They will all have your cell number, email accounts and glasses.”

“Glasses?” Jamie asked.

A pair of goggles were strapped onto Jamie’s head and the lenses lit up with a standby notice that his data stream experience was being customized. Jamie felt the hands release the restraints and the soldiers ran backwards out of the bay, securing the door behind them.

Jamie spun around to see the table. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Survive,” the general snapped.

There was a loud alarm noise, a red light flashed and at the far end of the bay a double door appeared as a seam in the far white wall. Then they came in. They were shuffling slowly. Their movements were oddly grotesque, like a parody of walking and living. Some, whose skin was gray and cracking from the tension, groaned. Others who were still mobile, but devoid of the colors of life, spoke; all of them had panels and even the most wizened fingers were racing across the screens spelling out messages.

“Damn it,” Jamie groaned, as the first message appeared on his glasses.

It was a classic flame from his sister about her childhood, their parents, her marriage and her family. Except it wasn’t his sister but was one of the twelve people in this room, whose name was Sally. Another message appeared, this time via panel text. It was an ‘angry ex’ rant. The author was named Phil and he was berating someone, not Jamie, about the way they were treating him. Soon the messages were coming in back to back. The goggles let him know he had texts, emails and social media awaiting his attention. He tried to press his eyes closed but he could feel the messages and hear the groans and the verbalized hatred of the shuffling, texting monstrosities he was locked in with.

“They can go on forever,” the general pointed out. “You can’t.”

Jamie turned to the corner table. He struggled to walk the short distance to it. He picked up the gun, released the clip and placed the five bullets in the clip. He returned the clip to the gun, drew back the receiver and the first round was chambered. He picked up the knife in his left hand. It was heavy, the blade was long and double sided, coming together at a point.

“My mother still doesn’t understand what a bitch she…” A texting figure complained.

Jamie whirled about, placed the gun against the thing’s forehead and hesitated.

“My ex-husband is an abusive, bullying…” Jamie fired.

The thing’s skull exploded and it crumbled to the floor, still texting its message. Jamie stamped the phone out of the dead thing’s hands. Then he moved forward. Four more shots, four more of the things dropped, heads gone, hands still typing away. Four more phones destroyed under Jamie’s boots.

Jamie felt the pressure of the messages ease slightly and he moved into the thick of the remaining seven. With violent precision he punctured each skull with his knife, then kicked away the phones until they were all in the far corner.

“What was the time on that?” the general asked.

“Two minutes seventeen seconds to destroy all twelve and their phones,” a soldier reported.

“What is he doing now?”

“Cutting off the hands, sir. “

“Get him into debriefing and get him a uniform,” the general said. “We’re going hunting.”

∞

It had taken four soldiers to haul Jamie off of the bodies where he was sawing through wrists with his knife. Once he realized who was grabbing him he did not resist, but he did look back at the pile of quivering bodies with an undisguised loathing. In a gun metal green room they strapped him to a steel chair that was bolted to the floor. They took off the goggles, which were registering no incoming messages, and then they left. He sat and waited.

General Talbot, accompanied by Commander Halle, came into the room. The general was looking at Jamie with interest. Jamie was staring at the far wall.

“How did you know to shoot them in the head?” the general asked.

“I didn’t,” Jamie said.

“But you shot five of them in the head and stabbed seven in the skull with your knife.”

“Yes.”

“You hesitated on the first one; what happened there?”

“I’d never killed before.” Jamie shrugged.

“Why did you start?”

Jamie thought about this for a moment. “She was complaining about her ex. It reminded me of my ex-wife. She sent me messages like that.”

“Then you fired.”

“Yes, then I fired.”

“What were you thinking when you did it?”

“Which time?”

“Any time.”

Jamie hesitated.

“What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t.”

“What…”

“I saw my ex-wife,” Jamie admitted. “I saw her sending me those messages still. I knew you couldn’t just kill them, you couldn’t just destroy the brain, you had to get the technology away from them.”

The general was silent for a moment. “Dr. Baxter, whatever you are, you are a natural. It took us three months to come up with the head, hands and tech protocol. You didn’t waste a bullet or a motion. The only thing you wasted time on was the hands. If you had a bigger knife you could’ve done that, easily. How would you feel about helping us hunt down the KVs and find the source of this thing?”

“I’m in, but on one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“I get a machete.”

Jamie, despite his bravado, collapsed moments after the general dismissed him. Hands caught him before he fell and he felt his body being lifted and carried away. His body, not an ideal specimen prior to his induction into Cyber Operations, was atrophied and his joints inflamed. The only comfort he had as his mind receded into the darkness of exhaustion was the satisfaction of having finally acted. In that place where dreams unload the luggage of life Jamie could see his ex-wife among the army of the texting undead. He was thrashing his way through a sea of texting, complaining bodies, sending heads, hands and tech spinning away. Moving purposefully toward the one, the first, the unrelenting. When he arrived there he made no preamble, no statement. He thrust with precision, he sent heads, hands and text on their separate way with no satisfaction. Just the knowledge that what he had done was a mercy; even if it was only a mercy to himself and the rest of the world. Jamie’s eyes flickered open briefly to see a fluid dripping into his arm through an IV. Then there was dreamless sleep.

As before, Jamie’s world became a series of brief, vivid moments, separated by long gaps of unconsciousness. Of the more memorable moments were the ones where he awoke screaming, his body on fire. Med techs, and others – who he hoped to be qualified physicians - hovered over him and spoke in hushed tones. Decisions were made and something warm and soothing sent his burning and frayed nerves back to the land of peace. Then there came the moment when he woke to a world without pain, without noise and without hovering faces. Jamie looked around, the room was operating theater green and the bed he was on was not a bed, but a table. It was the sort of table upon which surgeries were done. Jamie was alone, strapped to the table naked, except for a sheet covering him .

A tall man in a blue operating theater suit, with an ID clipped to his chest and insignia on his shoulders, approached the table. “Dr. Baxter. I’m Dr. Gottfried. Can you understand what I’m saying?”

Jamie began to speak, but felt his throat thick and sore.

“Just nod your head if you understand me,” Dr. Gottfried said.

Jamie nodded his head.

“Very good. You’ve been under our care for the last 36 hours. When you get up you will find yourself feeling a little…different. Please avoid sudden movements,” Dr. Gottfried advised.

Two med techs appeared at either side of the table and the table started to tilt forward. Jamie felt his body start to take the weight and was surprised to find he wasn’t sick or dizzy. Extended periods of immobility, especially medically induced immobility, usually resulted in nausea and vertigo when the body was first returned to an upright position. Instead his body seemed to welcome the change of position. The med techs released his straps and Jamie felt the weight of his own body settle into his legs. His legs were, when he looked down, not the atrophied limbs he remembered from before. They were thick and muscular like they’d been when he was studying to be a physician. He also felt muscles in his abdomen that he’d never felt before.

“It was not a full reset,” Dr. Gottfried explained. “We were given very little time and told not to alter your physiological functions… fundamentally. So we were not able to do a telomere reset, nor would they let us clear the lipofucian, or enhance your glial cells. We did promote a little phagocytosis and made a few tweaks. But mostly it was steroids, metabolic accelerators and old fashioned Russian muscle units.”

Jamie reached along the length of his torso and felt, for the first time in two decades, his ribs, with strong, lean muscles that he’d never experienced before. Then he thought about the steroids and looked down.

“No worries there,” Dr. Gottfried observed. “They’ve not shrunken to the size of a peanut. We’ve managed the antagonistic aspect of the protocol so that your normal hormonal level will be maintained at a slightly younger stage. All to do with the DHEA and the subordinate hormones. Of course you understand all of this.”

“Not entirely,” Jamie said, walking a few paces and then stopping to do a single legged squat. “Why did they do this?”

“They limited us because of your natural gift or ‘resistance’; as to why they had you go through this, I can only say that you are twelve hours from in-field deployment,” Dr. Gottfried informed him. “And when I said no sudden movement, I meant it. You need to learn your new body. If you push it too hard without stretching you may injure it and that would not be acceptable. A significant investment has been made in you.”

“Sir?” Said a man in a uniform, stopping just inside the operating room door.

“Sergeant Rosen, I would like you to meet Dr. Jamie Baxter. The general has attached him to your group. He’s just completed his training and will be working with you on your next few missions,” Dr. Gottfried said.

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant saluted and Jamie was placed in a robe.

∞

Jamie was standing in a cinderblock locker room putting on a uniform with Sergeant Rosen at his side. “What?” Jamie asked.

“I’ve got two rules,” Rosen said. “They are the only two rules. If you get these down we will get along fine.”

“Okay,” Jamie agreed. “What are the two rules?”

“Rule number one, don’t get me killed,” Rosen began.

“And rule number two?” Jamie asked.

“Never forget rule number one,” Rosen said.

“Fine, I won’t,” Jamie agreed.

“Have you been out among the KV?”

“Besides in the health campus psych unit or when a general stuck me in a room with 12 of them and made me wear a pair of net specs?” Jamie asked.

Rosen looked at him. “I thought that was some sort of macho bullshit from command.”

Jamie shook his head. “Sink or swim.”

“It explains the overhaul.”

“Overhaul?” Jamie asked.