[The Fear Saga 01] - Fear the Sky (2014) (58 page)

The room was silent for a moment, then Agent Mikhail Kovalenko from Russia spoke up, “Wait. I am confused. How did this construct come to be in the human’s blood? Surely if the humans had developed such a breakthrough there would have been a huge public announcement. Unless …”

His thought was finished by Jean-Paul Merard, “Unless they have been doing it in secret, Mikhail?”

The room was silent a moment, then several people turned to Agent Wilson. She responded as if accused, “I have no idea how the constructs came to be. I only discovered their existence.”

The Council was in an uproar. Several of the Agents spoke at once but John and Shahim stayed silent. This meeting of the Council was proving to be everything they had feared it might be. John looked around the room and realized that any further delays would probably be impossible. His avatar remained outwardly calm as he tried to think of ways to keep the group away from any further extrapolations and eventually he said in a loud but placating tone, “Fellow Agents, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There are many reasons that the human’s may have developed these constructs, and even more reasons that they may have kept the work secret. We all know the properties of the construct, but let us not forget that our own history shows that such things are often born of military research. Scientific research into biological weapons is as taboo on Earth as it is on Mobilius, if this was originally planned as some antidote to a proposed weapon then it would have been kept under the strictest confidence, even from the population of the nation that was working on it.”

John took a proverbial breath and looked around the room. He needed an ally, and Shahim saw it too and stepped up.

“Agent Hunt is right.” said Shahim, “Clearly this is a very disturbing turn of events, and we should all thank Agent Wilson for discovering it. But before we jump to wild conclusions based on this purely circumstantial evidence, we need to know more about what the humans are up to. Agent Wilson has the right idea, we need to gather more information on the matter and gain a deeper understanding of how widespread this condition is. I suggest that each Agent acquire a sampling of various humans’ blood, let us say one hundred samples, over the next week, and then we can reconvene and assess how widespread this phenomenon really is.”

Some in the room were nodding, but many were clearly not going to be mollified by this plan. Preeti Parikh offered up a point, “I feel I should point out that reports of Malaria and digestive illnesses have dropped off significantly in India, it is all over the news here. The government is calling for an inquiry. It seems unlikely that the two incidents are unlinked, and if they are born of the same cellular defense, then that would indicate that this would appear to be very widespread indeed.”

John kept up the pressure, trying to keep the room with them, “Indeed, this is clearly an epidemic of some sort. We must get more information and we must do it now. I second Shahim’s motion to have each Agent gather a hundred blood samples and provide them for analysis. We do not have much time. We should do this in no more than a week and reconvene then to decide if we need to take forceful action.”

The AI responded to the seconded motion by automatically initiating a vote, but Lana sat firm, silent and unresponsive. The AI ignored her silence, the votes of the other Agents enough to pass the motion.

Well, that should keep them busy for a while, thought John. But Agent Lana Wilson was still silent and John’s avatar glanced nervously at Shahim for a second. He was about to speak again when Agent Lana spoke, “While that is a … pleasantly conservative plan, I would like to suggest an alternative.”

She looked around the room and then said, “Arbiter, what options do we have to counter this cellular defense if it is as widespread as it would appear?”

Both John and Shahim immediately saw an opportunity to interrupt the operation and went to volunteer to be that proxy for the AI, but the arbiter was not looking for volunteers. It had an Agent in mind.

Lana’s avatar looked disgruntled by the fact that she was to be a puppet of the AI, but she could hardly refuse. It had been her line of thought, after all. The AI’s disembodied voice continued with the counter proposal Lana had initiated.

Princess Lamati thought a moment and then said, “I am officially on duty at the base until tonight at 6pm, I can leave any time after that.”

That’s it, then, thought John, his personality reeling at how suddenly it had all come to a head. This was it. John knew perfectly well that the design he had supplied to Madeline and Ayala for the antigen was not inherently different from the one that coursed through the veins of every Mobiliei, just modified for the humans’ different bio-chemical makeup. Once it was properly analyzed by the AI it would not take long for the powerful machine mind to devise a way to circumvent it. After all, before it had even been released on back on Mobilius, every nation had already had their war departments working on ways to outwit it.

The room voted on the AI’s motion. John and Shahim waited till the last moment, but the other six all voted for Lana to help the AI analyze the antigen, as the two double agents would have in their place. It would be pointless for them to risk their cover by being the only two Agents on the other side of a losing vote; and so, begrudgingly, but with well-feigned enthusiasm, they acquiesced.

“Arbiter,” said John after voting, still keeping his concern hidden behind his virtual face, “I am worried about how long it will take to develop a counter to this antigen once you have analyzed it. What would the turnaround time be for production of a response to the humans’ immuno device?”

Four days. John looked at Shahim. As there was really no way for the two conspirators to communicate with each in secret during these meetings, they had agreed on a simple method of signaling using their virtual body’s movements. It was a limited form of communication, little more capable than the hand motions of a batting coach in baseball, but they had only planned to use it to make some basic signals to each other while in Council meetings.

While looking at Shahim, John tilted his avatar’s head slightly to the left, then nodded, blinking his eyes once. Shahim kept John’s stare. This was it, then. Among all the codes they had developed, this was by far the most important one. Shahim acknowledged with the same movement, and they both blinked once more.

They had no more time. Within four days the satellites would have a new bio weapon capable of wiping out humanity. Worse, now that they were alerted to the humans’ ability to defend themselves, the AIs would not wait to use the new virus. The team would not have another chance to build and spread a new supercell in response.

For better or worse, this was it.

Silence. The only noise is the gentle mountain breeze wafting through the desert night.

Nothing disturbs the darkness deep in the mountains of northern Afghanistan.

A cold mountain wind sluices up and through a high valley deep in the Hindu Kush range that bridges northern Afghanistan and Pakistan. The valley is one of thousands that dissect the range, different from the rest of them only because of the men who lie sleeping in its myriad of hidden caves. Amongst these sleeping warriors are two members of the senior leadership of Al Qaeda. In order to avoid detection, the leaders of the insurgent forces move location every two nights, and rarely stay together. But tonight had been one of those rare occasions when two of them had met.

Around the outside of the camp, guards lie concealed in strategic spots, on the lookout for approaching planes or any other light at all in the settled night. This night was particularly dark. The moon had not risen yet, and nor would it for another three hours.

Among the many half-awake men dotted around the outside of the camp was Ushant Prabalah. He was twenty-two and he had lost his father, mother, and brother in a firefight between freedom fighters and the invading infidels in his village four years beforehand. He was smarter than most, he had learned to read and write and had been well on his way to a university education, but that had been before the fateful night his world had died. He did not know that boy anymore, that boy was as dead as his parents. As dead as the countless people Ushant had killed and seen killed since that tragic juncture.

Now he lay still. Unlike many of his fellow guards, Ushant’s eyes were vigilant. Many considered the nighttime lookout duty to be ignominious, but tonight two great generals were staying at their camp. A breeze washed over Ushant and he shivered. He could not see a thing. It was utterly dark. Only the stars provided any light. The land was black, the horizon barely discernable against the sky.

Silence.

Shahim could barely hear his own approach as he stepped lightly up to where Ushant lay. The boy was awake and watchful. He was staring out across the desert, but he was looking for sources of light: men clambering over the rocky terrain with torches, or planes or helicopters. But Shahim carried no light, and he had run the final two miles to the camp in perfect silence. Despite the darkness that shrouded him, Shahim’s sensitive eyes could see everything. Shahim approached the boy from the side and stood over him. He could hear the young guard’s breath. His heart beat. This boy was awake and keen. It was cold yet the boy was hardly moving. He was a believer, without the sullen complacency of the older men. This warrior was good at what he did and Shahim was going to need plenty of fighters like him for the coming task.

Unbeknownst to Ushant Prabalah, death was standing over him, looking down on him and judging him. But instead of ending the boy, the harbinger simply turned and walked silently away. Walking straight toward the hidden caves in the valley below even as Ushant so valiantly guarded them.

Shahim’s feet fell on the rocky surface with a precision not even the most highly trained human soldier could replicate. He had removed the sandals that the mountain warriors often wore, allowing his bare feet to adhere softly to the rocky surface, never slipping, never displacing the slightest pebble. Like a cat he, moved down into the sleeping valley.

His heat sensitive eyes told him that there were several groups of men in various tunnels and caves around the valley. But two groups stood out. In these two caves, he could see individuals sleeping apart from the rest of their groups, in both cases at the back of the cave, behind a wall of other warriors.

Ah, the two great generals. Such brave warriors … cowering behind their minions.

Shahim stepped slowly toward the first cave. The fully repaired and operational weapons system behind his left eye was already unsheathed and ready as he gently stepped into the cave, two long knives also brandished in his hands. Two guards sat just inside the door, barely awake as they peered into the darkness and tried to make out the black shape wafting in through the small entrance. But it made no sound, and carried no light, so they dismissed it as a trick of the night. Shahim neatly and silently decapitated the two men in unison, catching their severed heads before they touched the floor and resting them on each man’s lap.

Less than a minute later, Shahim was emerging from the cave once more. The first general was dead. After killing the guards, he had turned to the rest of the men sleeping peacefully on the ground. He had stepped over them carefully, walking to the back of the cave to lean in close to the man who slept alone behind them. The general had been wrapped in more blankets than all the other men combined, but his warm breath had been visible from the gap in his thick insulation. Shahim had focused his deadly stare on the man’s closed eyes and then fired a tight beamed sonic punch straight through the soft ocular tissue, crushing the eye easily and driving inward through the pulp to pulverize the grey tissue behind. The general’s head barely moved against his pillow as his brain was pulped, wiping his mind out in a silent second.