Terminated

Chapter 25

They never made it to anything like a destination along the narrow highway; the signs all advertised the faded glory of the Carlsbad Caverns and all its attractions, but just over the state line, Joe said, “Pat, we’ve got a bird coming in. Check that. Two birds, eight o’clock.”

They were large helicopters, military style if not military-owned, painted in desert camouflage, and as Patrick pulled off the road, the two helicopters circled overhead in a tight spiral. One drifted down in a storm of blown dirt and tumbleweeds to settle about a hundred feet away, while the other watched from overhead.

Pansy bailed out of the helicopter’s bay and ran over to the Challenger. Bryn had the door open before she reached them, and Pansy must have expected a hug, because she smiled, but the smile didn’t last long as Bryn slammed her against the car. “What did that psycho do to my sister?” Bryn shouted at her over the idling roar of the bird. “What happened to Annie?”

“Bryn, let go—let go!” Pansy was no lightweight; she slipped out of Bryn’s hold and hit her with a solid two-handed shove that sent her stumbling back two long steps. Riley, Joe, and Patrick were all out of the vehicle now. None of them intervened until Bryn reached for the sidearm that went with her uniform, and then Riley restrained her.

“Easy,” Riley said. “We need to hear this.”

“Thanks,” Pansy said, and frowned as she rubbed her bruised arm. She looked—fine. Well fed, well rested. Tense, but otherwise completely normal. “Well, I was going to tell you all how excited we were you were still with us, but . . .”

“Annie,” Bryn said. “I want to know what’s happened to my sister.”

“Annie’s fine, Bryn. What did you think, that Manny—” Pansy got it, then, and covered her mouth with her hand. “No. No. He wouldn’t do that. He’s not Jane, for God’s sake!”

“Then how does he know this cure is so effective?”

“Because I convinced Brick to help us out with data mining. He found another Alzheimer’s facility being used as a Fountain Group farming operation,” she said. “The people there couldn’t be helped, Bryn. So Manny gave it to Brick, and—he tested it there. It wasn’t what he wanted to do; it was what he needed to do. But it works. Effective on both those with the basic nanites, the ones on Returné, or those with the upgrades.” Pansy glanced at the helicopter. The pilot was gesturing to her. “We need to go. Now.”

Bryn was not a fan of helicopters, and this ride didn’t make her feel any better about them; she clung to the hanging strap as Patrick asked more questions. She couldn’t hear much over the constant noise, but he seemed satisfied enough with the answers from Pansy.

Joe silently offered her a thick piece of beef jerky. Peppered. She took it and chewed; she hadn’t even realized she was hungry, but she quickly downed six pieces from his stash, to his evident amusement. Riley needed less, but she ate, too. Bryn thought about asking where they were going, but it honestly didn’t make much difference, because the only alternative was a jump out the door, and from this height she didn’t really look forward to the recovery.

It was a relatively short ordeal, at least, and the aircraft touched down again within an hour’s flight. Still desert, so they’d likely gone west, though Bryn’s sense of direction was never good in the sky. There was an excellent reason she’d never signed up for the air force.

Once they were out of the bird and on solid, sandy ground, she realized they’d been let out . . . nowhere. There was a single small concrete building, well pitted with age and wind. Big enough to be a small closet, nothing more. No windows. One thick steel door that had once been painted some color, but had now faded to a dull off-tan that matched the sand.

The helicopters weren’t landing here, she realized; once the five of them were out, they immediately dusted off again and beat rotors on the sky heading east. The silence of the desert was stunning, after they’d disappeared toward the horizon. One of the quietest places in the world, she’d always thought, and it seemed even more hushed here than she expected.

Pansy said, “Welcome home.” She spread her hands to indicate the expanse of nothing that surrounded them. It was inhospitable as hell, and Bryn couldn’t imagine who’d want to call it home beyond snakes and lizards. It felt ancient here.

And it felt unwelcoming.

Pansy walked to the small concrete structure, pressed her hand flat on the center of the door, and waited. After a few seconds, the door sagged open, with an audible hiss of air.

“Hope you’re all okay with stairs,” she said. “It’s a long way down. Watch out, it’s steep.”

Inside, the lighting was dim, from inset wire-covered fixtures that had a distinctly cold-war era look to them. Concrete, and narrow, steep stairs descending. Nothing else except a bright yellow sign, only slightly faded, that read HIGH SECURITY AREA—KEEP ID VISIBLE AT ALL TIMES.

Bryn pulled the door shut behind her, and felt a shiver as it locked with a heavy, forbidding clunk.

Then she followed the rest of them down the steps.

She counted more than a hundred before she gave up. There were periodic flat landings, which helped them all catch their breath, but by Bryn’s estimate they went more than six stories down . . . and then arrived in a large, bare room with nothing but another door.

This one, though, had no keypad, no sensors, no handle on the door. Pansy simply waited, face upturned to a domed observation camera above the entrance, until it clicked open as well.

Another missile base, Bryn thought, but it turned out she was wrong.

“Welcome to BHC-One,” Pansy said, and led them down a clean, arcing hallway with blue carpeting. “That stands for biohazard containment, by the way. Back in the day, this was where the government tinkered around with nerve gas, and then it was refitted to explore infectious agents like anthrax, botulism, lethal influenza, and hemorrhagic fevers. Anything with a rapid infection rate and high kill percentage ended up getting grown and evaluated here, all the way through the late eighties,” she said. “When they mothballed the place, they disavowed it ever existed. Most of the equipment was too expensive to remove, and nobody wanted to take responsibility for destroying the place, so it just . . . stayed here. Manny took it over ten years ago. It’s been our home ever since.”

“Home,” Bryn repeated. “I thought you didn’t actually have a home.”

“It’s where we keep what’s important to us,” Pansy said; she sounded more serious than Bryn had ever heard her. “It’s our last stand. So yes. Home.”

The upgrades to the facility must have been made in the late sixties or early seventies . . . It had that vaguely futuristic, sterile, spaceship feel to the design, including the oddly shaped doorways. Everything had, no doubt, started off sleek and white, but the plastic hadn’t aged well . . . most of it looked yellowed now.

“Yeah, I can see why you love it,” Joe said. “Comfy.”

That made Pansy finally smile, a little. “This way.”

She took a turn to the right, down another weirdly curving hall, and then opened up a door on the left.

The room was circular, midcentury modern in style, and finished out the same way, with a round bed and vaguely futuristic chairs and desks. A wall-mounted flat TV didn’t look out of place in all that.

Neither did Annie, who was lying on her stomach on the bed, watching Star Wars unfold on the plasma screen. Her wavy hair cascaded over her back, and she was wearing pale pink shorts and a white tank top, and Bryn had a flashback to seeing her in exactly this position, even to the crossed ankles and her fists wedged under her chin.

She’d been fourteen then. She looked just as young now.

“Bryn!” Annie exploded off the bed in a rush, grabbed hold, and danced Bryn around in a dizzying whirl. “Oh God God God, I knew you weren’t dead, they told me you had to be, but I knew it,you bitch, how could you do that to me. . . .” Annie ran out of words and just hugged her, and Bryn hugged back.

Mr. French came charging out from under the bed, barking excitedly, jumping at their feet and shins.

Home.

It felt that way.

“She’s fine,” Pansy said. “I told you she was.”

Bryn pushed her sister back and held her at arm’s length. She looked . . . great. Not a scratch. “They haven’t experimented on you?”

“Manny? No way. He just gives me the shots I need—that’s it. I talked to the fam a week ago—well, Mom and Grace, but they’ll tell everybody else. I lied. I said we were together, and we were fine. Had to keep it short, you know? But they’re not worrying. And they’re all safe. Brick has people watching.” Annie studied her face, and Bryn saw the worry in her eyes. “You look bad, honey. What happened to you?”

“Later,” Bryn said. “As long as you’re okay, I’m okay.” She turned to Pansy, who was leaning against the door. “I assume Manny wants us.”

“Manny is chewing through the straps on his straitjacket in his eagerness,” Manny’s voice said. It came from inset speakers in the slick plastic ceiling. “Pansy, quit playing happy families and get them up here. Now.”

“Yes, o master,” she said, and flipped him off.

“I saw that,” he said.

“He didn’t,” she told them. “No cameras in the rooms. I insisted. But come on. He needs to talk to you.”

“Annie comes, too,” Bryn said.

Pansy sighed. “Fine. But leave the dog.”

Bryn ignored that, too. Mr. French was too excited to be left behind, and she let him trail along after them.

There was, it seemed, an elevator after all, in the central core; it whisked them up a couple of floors, and Pansy got them past more security doors, into what seemed to be . . . an office.

Manny’s office.

He had a big white desk, chair, a shocking red rug, and a few guest chairs that matched the bloody color. Modern art on the walls that seemed weirdly avant-garde for someone like him, but Bryn had learned not to assume anything, by now.

Liam was standing next to the desk, reading a report from a file folder. He put it down as they filed in, and greeted them all with a nod and smile—but no handshakes or backslaps, not now.

Manny glanced up. He was wearing the square reading glasses again, punching keys on a laptop as if they’d done him personal wrong, and he kept typing as he said, “Never thought I’d see any of you again.”

“Glad to see you, too, Manny,” Patrick said. He offered Bryn a chair, but she shook her head. Annie slipped into it instead and crossed her legs; she seemed completely at ease, but if she was, Bryn thought she was the only one. Even Mr. French couldn’t settle down, weaving around her legs and pressing close to emphasize how much he’d missed her. “Guess Bryn told you that Jane’s dead.”

That merited another uplift of the man’s attention, and raised brows. “You can verify it?”

“I was there,” Patrick said. “If the cure worked, she’s gone. But that hasn’t solved anything, has it?”

“No,” Manny said. “There’s a reason we’re in the fucking last-stand bunker. You remember your friend Major Plummer? The one with the shiny helicopters who ran to your rescue? Plummer reports that there’s a new inoculation program being implemented in select branches of service. I think we can all guess what that might be.”

“Returné,” Patrick said.

“They’ve manufactured enough in military labs to take care of the key areas. As far as I can tell, they’re implementing the upgrades on the elites, like the Rangers, SEAL teams, and such. CIA’s probably got its own programs running. Ditto every other wannabe badass agency with initials out there. And it’s spreading. Other countries are trying to grab samples for replication.”

“What is the Fountain Group doing?”

“What they always do—profit from it,” Manny said sourly. “I know who they are. Hell, I know where they are. They’re the same people at the heart of everything that cuts money out of the world and stuffs it into their pockets. They own the factories. Right now, it’s covert, but they’re protected now. The government’s on board and in bed, and making sweet nanite love. They get what they’ve always gotten—power, and money. And it’s done. They’ve won.”

Bryn regretted giving up her chair to Annie, because her knees felt suddenly watery. She gripped Patrick’s arm tight enough to leave a mark. “They can’t. They can’t win, Manny. We can’t just—give up.”

He studied her in silence for a moment. Studied them all. And she got the very distinct, unpleasant feeling that there was something he wasn’t telling them.

“You have the solution,” Patrick said. “The cure works. You said it works.”

“Thorpe’s cure works,” Manny agreed, “but it’s a losing game. No way we can get enough out there, fast enough. Worse, nobody’s going to cooperate in giving it. We can’t stealth-inject a hundred, or a thousand, or a million. Or a billion. And that’s where it’s going. Exponential growth, like a virus. Nobody wants to die, Pat. Not you, not me. It’s the Achilles’ heel of the human race. Our survival instinct.”

“Parents will infect their children to save them,” Pansy said. “Why not? Who can stand to see their children die? Or their parents, or relatives, or friends? It doesn’t stop. It can’t stop until we stop it.” And they all knew that was true—Joe, standing there recently infected, was proof enough of that.

“You just—you just said it can’t be stopped,” Annie said. “Pansy? You’re scaring me.”

“Good,” Manny said. “Because what I’m about to show you is fucking terrifying.”

Nobody said anything to that. Liam looked down; he already knew, Bryn saw. Pansy did, too, but she just stared straight at Manny.

He said, “I didn’t want this burden. You brought it to me, Pat. You made me part of this. I’m not going to make the last decision. One of you—one of you needs to do that. Because whatever you do, me and Pansy, we’re going to be safe.”

“Will you?” Liam asked him. “What happens when Pansy falls ill? She will. It’s the human condition. She’ll develop some flaw, some disease, something that will start her on a path toward the end. What will you do? Let her go?”

“Yes,” Pansy said. “He’ll let me go. Because he knows—he knows that it’s the right thing to do.”

“So we’re all wrong, is that it?” Joe asked. “Wrong to want to fight to live?”

She shook her head to that. “I don’t know. I can’t answer for you, or for anybody else. Just me. And I say—I say I’d rather not be part of the next phase of humanity. I’m opting out.”

“You say you can stop this,” Patrick said to Manny. “Show us how.”

Manny pressed keys on his computer, and behind him, the blank white wall slid aside, revealing thick, floor-to-ceiling observation glass. Beyond it was a huge array of computer servers. “The room was originally built to house those big sons of bitches they used back in the sixties,” he said. “Punch cards and tape drives. It was upgraded with Crays in the eighties. What’s in there now is enough computing power to make Google envious. It’s running silent, but it’s hooked into every single broadcast tower in the cellular networks. Every commercial television tower and satellite. Every GPS network. I’ve spent the time you were gone working with every major infoterrorist group in the world to get this done, so I’m not just a criminal; I’m probably on everybody’s most-wanted list right now—or would be, if they knew who I was. See, Thorpe was right, but he was a doctor. He thought like a doctor, one-to-one relationship. I thought like a technician.”

“Nanites are machines,” Liam said. “Incredibly small, yes. Incredibly limited in some ways. But they are sensitive to certain very specific transmission signals. Thorpe’s cure was the key. . . . It didn’t destroy the machines; it turned them off using a code sequence.”

Bryn felt cold, now, but she said what they were all thinking. “You have a remote kill code and the means to deliver it. You don’t need the serum, or needles. You can kill it all, simultaneously.”

“As long as it’s in range of the transmission, yes,” he said. “But when I said it’s a kill code, it’s literal. If we push it today, it kills three people in this room: Bryn, Riley, and Annie.”

“Four,” Joe said. Manny looked stricken. “Sorry. Meant to tell you but we haven’t exactly had a chance to catch up. It was this, or being dead on a cell floor.”

Manny took in a deep breath. “Four people in this room. But it’s not only that. There are unknown numbers out there—the survivors from Pharmadene. The ones the Fountain Group has infected, deliberately. The ones already inoculated by other groups. I don’t have any idea how many lives this will take—thousands, maybe tens of thousands. My point is this: tomorrow, it will be more. How many days can pass before none of us can justify taking action?”

The silence was profound enough that Bryn thought she could hear Patrick’s heartbeat. It seemed fast to her. Hers was rushing, too, driving adrenaline into her body like shimmering waves of discomfort. Fight or flight. In this case, neither one would work.

“I’m not pushing the button,” Manny said. “I can’t. I’ve thought about it, every single day since you disappeared; at the time, it was a way to get back for what those bastards did. That’s why I put it together—revenge. Revenge and paranoia, because you know me, I’m paranoid and I admit it. But you called. You came back.” He shook his head, got up, and looked out the window at the array of machines. “And I’m not a strong enough person to make this call.”

“Nobody is,” Riley said. “You can’t. We can’t. You’re talking about playing God as much as those people are.”

“It has to be done.” That came from probably the most unexpected source: Annalie. She was still sitting down in the chair, looking young and sweet and utterly vulnerable. Her clear gaze was locked on Manny like a laser. “Guys, it has to be. Never mind us. Never mind who else dies that doesn’t deserve to. The point is, we stop it now or it doesn’t stop. Because if we don’t want to push the button on four people here, or a thousand out there . . . what happens at a million?” Her eyes filled with tears, and she blinked them away, fast. “I didn’t get a choice. None of us did, really. So I say push the button.”

“It’s not a vote,” Patrick said. “It’s your sister’s life, and I’m not letting that happen. I’ve fought too hard. I’m not going to just—give up. There’s another way.”

“Not one that works,” Manny said. He spun the computer around. “Just press enter. It’s ready to send.”

On the screen was a text box, a pop-up that read simply INITIATE TRANSMISSION? Two buttons. The OK button was highlighted.

“Liam?” Manny said. The older man stood still for a moment, and Bryn saw a tremor in his fingers . . . but then he shook his head and looked away. “Patrick?”

“Fuck you,” Patrick said tightly. “No.”

“Pansy?”

“No,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

That left the four of them. The infected.

“No,” Riley said, unprompted. “Not at that price.”

“You mean, at the price of your life?”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” she said, and Bryn thought she saw the same flat, predatory expression in her eyes that Jane had so often flashed. We’ve changed, she thought, and felt a chill. We’ll keep changing. He’s right. We might still be human, but it won’t last.

Joe just shook his head when Manny’s gaze flicked to him. That left Bryn and Annie.

Bryn held out her hand. Annie took it.

“Together?” she asked.

“Bryn!” Patrick grabbed her. “No. No, you can’t do this.”

“Yes, I can,” she said. “You don’t see it. You’ve never seen it.”

“Seen what?”

“The monster,” she said. “And I don’t want you to ever see that.”

She reached for the button.

Riley hit her from behind and sent her crashing face-first onto the corner of the desk; bone shattered, blood splattered. Bryn rolled, throwing her off balance, and managed to get her arm up in time to stop Riley’s knife from punching into her eye. It went through the meat of her forearm, and caught between the bones; she used that, and twisted, yanking it out of Riley’s fingers. She punched Riley, punched her again, tossed her into the wall, and buried the knife in the other woman’s chest, low and center, cutting her diaphragm. Riley screamed, lost air, and clawed at Bryn desperately, opening gouges and drawing blood.

“This,” Bryn managed to gasp out. “This is what we are now. No future, no family, no children coming after us. Just the monsters, until we’re gone, and we’ll get worse. This is the future. Push the button!”

Patrick had forgotten her sister, riveted by the horrifying violence she and Riley were inflicting on each other.

Nobody thought to stop her as Annie, weeping, walked to the desk and pressed ENTER.

Patrick screamed out a raw, wordless scream of denial and horror and loss, but it was too late. Her hand was steady and calm, and in the aftermath, Bryn went limp and sat back, waiting. They were all waiting.

Patrick rushed to her and took her in his arms, rocking her. “No,” he whispered. “No, no, God, no, don’t do this, don’t do this. . . .”

“I never should have come back in the first place,” she said. “I’m sorry. I love you.”

Annie sat down next to her and crossed her long, elegant legs, sitting Indian-style like the little girl she’d been, not so long ago. “Do you remember what happened to Sharon?” she asked Bryn.

“Sharon . . .” She walked away from home. She never came back.

“Brynnie, I swear—I swear it was an accident. I never meant it—we were just arguing, the way we always did. She pushed me and I was in the kitchen cutting an apple, and I fell down. Then she slipped and fell on the knife, and it cut her on the thigh, and the blood—there was so much blood. I didn’t try to do it—I didn’t. I wouldn’t. Dad tried to save her. He used that belt, you know, the one in the bathroom? He tied it up in a tourniquet around her leg, right here.” She traced the spot with her fingertips on her own leg. “But she died. And they didn’t want anyone to know. Dad took her away, and Mom and I cleaned it all up. I don’t know where he took her. But I’m a monster, too, Bryn. From that moment, I was a monster. I never told anybody, but—I wanted you to know before we go. I’m so sorry.”

Bryn hugged her, and held on to Patrick. Riley was still bleeding, and although the wound seemed to be knitting closed, it was taking longer than usual.

Joe let out a slow, trembling sigh. “I feel—” He lurched, caught himself, and slid down into a chair. He ran both hands over his bald head. “Can I talk to Kylie and the kids?”

Pansy, tears coursing down her face, took out her cell phone and dialed a number. She held the phone up to him.

Bryn felt it, then. A lurch inside, as if something had started to glitch. A bad part in a smooth-running machine.

Annie’s breath caught, as if she felt it, too. Then she let out a slow sigh, and her head slid over to rest on Bryn’s shoulder.

There wasn’t any pain. She was just . . . gone.

That quickly.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Bryn told her. It was too late, but she said it anyway. “You were just a kid, sweetie. It wasn’t your fault.” She glanced down. Her sister’s eyes were open, and at peace.

Riley was still fighting, but it didn’t last long. She couldn’t speak, but the fire was there, raging and fighting, until it finally guttered out. Then she was gone, too.

Joe’s low voice stopped. Bryn heard Pansy let out a low, anguished sob.

Mr. French had laid his warm weight down in her lap, and he was whimpering with distress. He knew, too. Poor thing. She put a hand on his warm head.

“You have to let me go,” Bryn said to Patrick. “Please let go now. I can’t be a monster. We can’t be that.”

He knew. Finally, at last, he knew. She felt it in the way he kissed her.

And that was the last thing she felt.

One last glimpse of light, one last whisper of sound. Manny’s voice. Get the . . .

She was curious, even now. Get what?

But then it didn’t matter, and she was gone, too.