The Lethal Agent (The Extraction Files Book 2) (32 page)

LRF CORRIDOR

SEPTEMBER 14, 2232

Mable had to remind him to slow his steps three or four times as they walked to the Planetary Systems department. As far as Aida or anyone else was concerned, nothing happened, nothing was wrong. There was no reason to be worried.

But Theo needed to see her for himself.

The entire LRF seemed to know something was amiss. Scholars moved faster than he’d ever seen, some even ran. Several collided in the corridor like cars in a physics simulation.

It only made Theo pull Mable along all the faster. Minutes later, they arrived to find the wing vacant. “She’s not here,” Theo called from the doorway of Aida’s dark office.

“Calvin’s gone, too.”

At the end of the hall, the conference room was dark.

“You think they’re back at the apartment?” Theo tried to think of where else they might be. Aida could have gone to FIC, but that didn’t explain Calvin’s absence. Where were they?

Mable directed him toward the office of a Scholar Theo had never met.

“Dr. Niemeyer?” Mable stood in the doorway and waited. Several times she prompted him, but he never moved.

“You think—?” Theo asked.

“Yeah,” Mable replied. To Theo’s shock, she lifted him off the desk by his hair. His face sagged and turned purple where the blood had already begun to settle. The tablet left its image across his cheek. “Find me a flashlight,” she said without looking up.

Theo could see where she was going with it. He searched through Niemeyer’s office, then Aida’s across the hall, but didn’t find a flashlight until he came across Calvin’s extraction kit in the bottom drawer of his desk.

“Sorry,” Theo said as he returned to Niemeyer’s office and handed it over. “I should have looked in Calvin’s desk first.”

Mable ignored him. She clicked on the flashlight and shone it into the mouth she’d already worked open. “He’s got an Echo.”

“Still? Wouldn’t it have dissolved by now?” At the lab, it had taken only a second or two to oxidize.

“Yeah. Maybe since it’s still in his body? We need to find Calvin.”

Theo pulled the tablet from where he’d left it in the chair and pulled up the ecomm application. Before he could send anything to Calvin, Theo saw an ecomm he never would have believed.

“Mable, look.” In a stroke, he set the ecomm to hover in holographic projection where they both could read it.

TO: LRF STAFF-ALL

FROM: DR. MICHAEL FILMORE, LRF DIRECTOR

MSG: REPORT ANY CASUALTIES TO THE OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR IMMEDIATELY. FORM A LINE. ALL CASES WILL BE HANDLED AS SWIFTLY AS POSSIBLE.

“Holy shit,” Mable said to herself. “How many people have to die before they send an ecomm like this?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “A lot.”

LRF-AQ

SEPTEMBER 14, 2232

The chaos of his once-private office hit Michael like a slap to the face. Dozens of frenzied Scholars filled the room and more waited outside the door. One talked over the other, and each thought theirs was the most important case.

In his head, he counted upwards of forty dead, though the number continued to climb.

A fantastic day for Abigail to quit.

“I was talking to him about the water-resistant grain splices and he just slumped forward. He died while I was talking to him!” screamed Dr. Ulrich from Astrobotany.

“He was my mentor! What am I going to do?” cried the new Dr. Holtz.

“She was the best in the field. Without her, we’ll have to start over! All her data is gone!” yelled another before covering her face and running out.

Michael put up his hands as a physical barrier between himself and the growing crowd. They’d never seen anything like it, he knew. In their highly-ordered little worlds, a sudden death was about as catastrophic as anything they could imagine.

He tried to ease them as much as he could. “Yes, I understand. I will take down everyone’s information. There will be a formal inquiry. I’m still working on contacting Dr. Masry.”

As he spoke, he wrote a series of desperate ecomms.

MSG: CRISIS.

MSG: NEED YOU.

MSG: COME TO MY OFFICE.

MSG: FORTY DEAD.

MSG: PLEASE ABIGAIL.

As each new ecomm went unanswered, Michael felt his hope slipping further away. She was gone. He’d lost her, for reasons he didn’t understand.

At the back of the screaming crowd, Michael heard a voice above the others, loud and commanding.

“Get out! Go back to your offices. Each department, send one ecomm. Go back to your offices!” The more he shouted, the more Scholars turned to listen, though some only argued more.

Michael peered through the group, trying to see who the speaker was.

“We came to speak with the director,” Dr. Lehmon insisted.

Finally, in a gap between heads, Michael saw Dr. Hill, his cool, collected calm spreading over the room. “Director Filmore requires a status update from each department within the hour.”

A few looked to Michael. He nodded and confirmed, “I need a head count by 1700.”

Michael had no idea why Dr. Hill wanted to see him, but he was nonetheless grateful for a break from the crowd. Each person in his office represented at least one death. There were dozens.

And he had thought eight was bad.

“Director, what do you know about the bugs?” Dr. Hill asked.

Michael narrowed his eyes. “You’re one of the operatives.” Dr. Arrenstein had mentioned there were several of his proxies aboard the LRF but refused to release their names. Now Michael knew one.

“Technically, I’m an agent, but yes, I’m with CPI.”

Michael fumed, huffing hot breath. “Your bugs just killed forty Scholars.”

“We don’t have confirmation of that, but yes, it’s likely that they did.” Dr. Hill made the admission with nothing but calm.

“Why? What triggered them?” As he asked, Michael’s tablet buzzed with incoming ecomms, already divulging the extensive damage to his staff.

“We don’t know, but I need to check the rest of the personnel. Figure out a reason to get them in line, but I have to test them.”

“How? Why haven’t you tested them before?” If Calvin knew how to keep people safe from bugs and simply hadn’t done it, Michael was going to be very disappointed.

“I have to administer anesthetic and search their brains. It’s a highly invasive process. We only perform extractions on known targets. There’s never been a reason for a general sweep.” Dr. Hill slumped into one of the two formal office chairs Michael kept for appearances. “I’ve extracted twenty-nine in the last year,” he admitted.

A ding sounded from Michael’s tablet. Someone requested access to his office. Michael tapped the icon and saw the vid feed from the other side of the door.

He opened it immediately.

Abigail walked in looking like he’d never seen her. Blonde hair pulled back, a baggy shirt and loose black pants hanging off her frame. Her arms were crossed, as if she could scarcely be bothered to see him.

“What’s going on?” she asked, her eyes narrow.

“We think the bugs caused a massive fatality event aboard the LRF. I’ve sent word to Masry but had no response,” Michael explained.

Abigail looked at Dr. Hill in the chair.

“What do you need me for?” she asked.

Michael considered sending Dr. Hill away, but he needed him.

“I need you to correlate a list of casualties for each department and give me the final count. I’ll need it when I give Masry the update.” And he wanted her back.

“I already quit,” she reminded him and turned to leave.

Dr. Hill looked between Abigail and Michael with no small measure of surprise.

Michael hurried across the room and caught her at the door. “I’m sorry about the Ares Colony, I really am. I had no idea you’d think less of me for it. But right now, the LRF needs you. I need you.”

Her blonde hair flopped over her shoulder as she spun to glare at him, evaluating his sincerity. “You like killing innocent people.” Her tone was nothing but venom.

“I don’t, and you know it. I hate it. I need you to help me get this under control before we lose anyone else.”

“Recall the termination.”

“I can’t do that.” Why did she have to make it so hard on him?

“Yes you can. There are eight hours until the planets are aligned and the missile will be fired. You have time to fix this. If you don’t, you’ll never see me again.”

Michael lowered his head and sighed. Abigail took one of the most loathsome aspects of his position and used it against him, like he enjoyed terminating whole colonies.

Abigail pushed past him and said to Dr. Hill, “Did you know Alex was alive?”

“Alex?” Michael asked. He had no idea who she was talking about.

Clearly, Dr. Hill did. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth fell open as he asked, “What?”

“He is. I saw him. He’s on the Martian colony. The colony he—” Abigail turned to point a long, accusatory finger at Michael. “—terminated yesterday. He’s going to die. Along with nine kids.”

Dr. Hill shifted his focus from Abigail to Michael, his expression from shock to anger.

Michael pieced it together too late.

Dr. Hill set his jaw and clenched his fists as he stood. Tone dripping in threat, he said, “Recall the termination.”

“Right now, we need to focus on identifying Scholars with bugs and removing them, we can’t—”

“Now.”

“I can’t.”

“You can, and you will—” Abigail said behind him.

Michael turned and shook his head. “A recall order requires the access codes for the ordering researcher. I can give mine, but that still leaves us with Dr. Perkins.”

“Then get him on comms and—”

She made it sound so simple.

“Abigail, Dr. Perkins is dead.”

LRF CORRIDOR

SEPTEMBER 14, 2232

Aida stomped the entire way to her office. The acrylic cube warmed in her hands, the embryo protected at its center.

A life.

It was the Earth within the solar system, a tiny, improbably living thing in a wide expanse of nothing.

And it, too, needed a new home.

She would figure something out. Aida sank into Dr. Parr’s old office chair, the one with worn-through arm rests from his years of research. She set the cube on the desktop and tried to think of what to do.

Theo and Maggie walked in a moment later. “You’re back,” he said with a beaming smile on his face.

Aida snatched the cube into her hand and slid it into her desk drawer. “It’s first thing in the morning. Of course, I’m here.” She looked between the two of them and wondered what they were up to. “Why are you here?” she asked Theo.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Maggie asked, her arms crossed, and her brow furrowed.

“What do you mean?”

“Checked your ecomms lately?” Theo asked.

As it happened, no, she hadn’t. She’d been too busy arguing with her no-good husband. She was so pissed, she could just spit.

But now they’d mentioned it, she tapped her tablet and pulled up her ecomms. That’s when she saw it.

Casualties.

Form a line.

“What—? Who?” was all she could get out, her mind racing as it processed the situation.

“Niemeyer, for one. We don’t know of any others yet. Have you seen Calvin?” Theo asked.

Aida shook her head, terrified. It wasn’t like him to be late for work. The worst sort of thoughts filled her mind. Had she seen him for the last time? What did she say to him? She couldn’t remember the words.

“Don’t freak out,” Maggie started. “He might just be at Filmore’s office reporting Niemeyer.”

Not five minutes later, Aida, Theo, and Maggie waited at the door to the director’s office apartment. No one mentioned the suspicious lack of researchers forming a line.

From the other side of the door, they heard screaming, yelling. Some sort of argument. Aida wouldn’t be dissuaded. She pressed her palm to the scanner and again requested permission to enter.

A few seconds later, the door opened. There stood the director, his assistant, and, on the far side of the room, Calvin.

Aida let out a quiet sigh of relief, her pounding heart beating harder at the sight of him.

Then, she realized he had been the one yelling. At the Moon Director. At the second most powerful man in the Scholar class.

Something was very wrong.

Theo and Maggie walked into the office behind her a moment before the door spun shut again.

“Are you all right?” Calvin’s tone was clinical and reserved compared to his usual warmth.

“Yes, thank you Dr. Hill.” She returned his coolness, attempting to be discreet about their relationship. “Did you report Dr. Niemeyer’s death?”

“I was getting there. We have another issue to deal with, first.” Calvin glared at Director Filmore with an intensity that would have made her buckle in a second.

Director Filmore shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do. I told you, I don’t have access to the colony codes. There’s no way to recall an order without both codes.”

Aida didn’t understand.

Ms. Perch looked at Calvin with her arms crossed. She, too, was angry. “Comm Silas.”

On the director’s tablet, Calvin punched in a comm code from memory. She didn’t recognize the face that appeared.

“Good morning, Dr. Hill. I was expecting Director Filmore.” The man on the screen had no shirt. She could see grey and black chest hair at the edge of the screen. He had a warmth to his smile that she’d only seen in Calvin.

Aida wondered how the two knew each other.

“The director has a serious problem,” Calvin looked straight at Filmore.

Director Filmore walked closer to his tablet so the man could see him. “Dr. Arrenstein, we’ve had a crisis occur this morning. At least forty are dead. We think your—” He turned back to look at Aida, though she didn’t know why. “Your facility might have some insight into the situation.”

“Tell him what you did,” Ms. Perch insisted.

“Your agent Dr. Hill believes he has a personal affiliation with a colonist in the Ares Colony. When the colony was deemed a failure, I approved the termination order. He is refusing to offer his cooperation until the colony is restored.”

Aida looked at Calvin but saw his attention was entirely on the shirtless Dr. Arrenstein and the director. None of it made sense. What did a colony termination order have to do with anything? And since when was Calvin an agent?