“Not exactly. I had this whole idea where each job would be paid based on whatever the average was for the same type of work before the outbreak. I thought it was fair and made the most sense, but no one listened to me. In the end, Sean decided on his own what everyone would be paid.”
“So why does Sean even bother hearing the Directors’ opinions if he doesn’t listen to them?” Maria asked.
“He wants them to feel like they’re important because he trusts them to manage everything that keeps people fed and the lights on. Like my ol’ man used to say, ‘happy employees are loyal employees,’” Danny said with his colorful accent. “No offense, Ben, but you know that’s true.”
Ben waved away the comment without issue.
“So, about this credit that everyone gets,” Morgan continued. “People get credit every month?”
“Uh-huh, it’s electronically linked to your ID,” Ben said. “So when you go to anywhere that requires credit like food banks and nightclubs, you scan your ID and the ‘cost’ gets deducted from your credit. And then Sean can monitor everywhere you’ve been and everything you’ve bought.”
“Yeah, like ‘Big Brother,’” Danny added as he suddenly pushed himself out of his grungy armchair. “Speaking of IDs, I’ve got all of yours ready. Hang on a sec.”
He disappeared into what was likely a bedroom and returned moments later with a handful of metal bands in one hand, a small electronic-looking box in the other, and a laptop tucked beneath his arm. He sat back down and placed the bands and small box on the rickety coffee table in front of him before firing up the laptop. “So today I was told that Sean wants to add fingerprints to everyone’s ID file.”
Ben frowned at this bit of news. “Why?”
“Dunno. That jerk Doug told me, so you can guess how that went.”
“Oh, man, I forgot how stupid that guy is.”
“Well, he hasn’t gotten any smarter since you’ve been gone. I think I’m just getting better at dealing with his total failure to communicate the simplest instructions.”
“Who’s Doug?” asked Maria.
“He’s the Director of Census and Labor, which just means he’s supposed to make sure everyone is registered with an ID and is assigned a job. But he’s a total idiot who only got the job because Sean wanted to sleep with his sister.” Danny then paused to rub his eyes with one hand. “Most people just ignore him, but he’s a daily headache for me.”
“So why the fingerprints?” Ben asked. “Has there been a spike in people forging or stealing other people’s IDs or something?”
Danny shook his head. “No more than usual. Maybe Sean wants to get rid of the ID bands completely so that people just use their fingerprints, which, I gotta admit, would make sense. There’s more than a million people registered in the five boroughs, and with people losing their IDs all the time, it’s a major pain for people to prove who they are. Fingerprints would solve everything.”
“So you need to scan our prints,” Andy said. “But won’t that completely defeat the purpose of you having an alias?” she asked Ben.
“It shouldn’t,” he replied, sounding certain. “It’s not as if Sean’s got a copy of my prints. And anyway,” he went on as he combed his hand through his hair, “Jim and I burned and deleted all our medical and school records in Virginia last year, which were the only thing that had my fingerprints. We destroyed Karen’s records too. If Sean ever searches for our old records, he’ll find nothing. It’s like we never existed.”
Andy raised her eyebrows as she listened to Ben. She had no idea the measures he and Jim had taken to erase their pasts.
“As long as they’re not asking for a photo ID, I’m not worried,” he concluded.
“That ain’t gonna happen soon,” Danny assured. “With the data rates we gotta work with right now, photo files are too big to transfer from the main server to all the food banks and checkpoints. It would take five friggin’ minutes just to check one person’s identity. No one’s got that kinda patience.”
Not a moment later, the lights throughout the entire apartment began to flicker—once, twice, and after the third time, they went out completely, and the apartment became pitch-black.
“Terrific,” Danny muttered as the others reached into their pockets and backpacks to retrieve flashlights. Maria found hers first and illuminated the room. By the time the others found theirs, the lights flickered back on.
“Does that happen a lot?” Morgan asked.
“All the time,” Danny replied with a sigh as he plugged his laptop into the wall. “And always when I’m about to do something with my computer.”
Everyone waited as Danny hooked up the fingerprint scanner to the computer. Once everything was ready, he looked up.
“So I told Doug that I’d only scan prints for new people who were registering for IDs, but knowing Sean, he’ll demand that everyone else start scanning their fingerprints at checkpoints to get them on record, so better to get yours on record now by me than some Infantry punk.”
“Do you need all ten prints for each person?” Ben asked.
“No, I just need one fingerprint per file. But I can add up to five prints per person.”
“Good. I want you to add one of my prints to three separate names. Can you do that?”
Danny blinked a few times before his face broke out into a smile, making him look almost handsome. “What are you up to, Ben?”
“Only good things, I promise.”
“All right…whatever you want. If anyone ever finds the glitch, which I doubt, I’ll just say I accidentally copied the same print to three different names.”
“Also, I’ll need to add another print, maybe two, to each of the three names, but it will be someone else’s prints.”
Danny looked up and gave Ben the same smile before breaking out into a chuckle. He held up his hands. “Like I said, whatever you want.”
The girls exchanged glances as each silently attempted to decipher Ben’s plan. When Andy figured it out, she wordlessly expressed to the others that Ben, Jim, and Brian would be sharing multiple aliases.
Ben scanned the print of his right index finger first, which Danny copied to the files of the three aliases that he would be using: John Simmons, Michael Wilkins, and Matthew Thompson, all age twenty with brown hair and eyes and a height of six-foot-one. There was no meaning behind the three names; Ben had simply found them in a phonebook a few days earlier. Danny handed him the ID bracelets for all three.
Morgan went next. She scanned two of her fingerprints, which Danny quickly added to the file of her new name, Sarah O’Brian. “A good Irish name,” he said with approval as she bit her lip.
Andy followed Morgan and applied her right thumbprint to Katrina Wilson’s file before being handed her ID. It was similar to a medical ID bracelet except that there was a small black-and-white barcode where the person’s medical condition would normally be inscribed.
“And last but not least, Isabel…” Danny said, looking at Maria, smiling awkwardly at her.
“Torres,” Maria responded, giving her fake last name.
“Right,” Danny muttered as he fumbled through the remaining ID bracelets to find her name. “Here we go.”
She sat beside him as the others had done to scan her prints, but he appeared to be slightly flustered by her presence and made more than a few keystroke errors when updating her file. As she stood to return to her seat on the adjacent sofa, his gaze lingered on her for more than a few seconds, but he quickly caught himself. Only Ben seemed to notice as he suppressed a smile.
Danny then held up the remaining IDs. “I’ve still got three more…Henry, Kathy, and Julia.”
“Here, give ’em to me,” Ben said, holding out his hand. “They can get their prints scanned at the checkpoints.”
“Whatever you want.”
“Jim will come by in two days to scan his thumbprint, and he’ll bring these.” Ben held up the bracelets for the three male aliases: John, Michael, and Matthew.
“And you want me to add his thumbprint to all three?” Danny asked.
“That’s right.”
“No problem. Just tell him to come by before ten.”
Narrowing his eyes on Danny, Ben gave him a knowing look. “What, you hitting the clubs or something?”
Danny looked sideways at Maria for a spilt-second as he placed his laptop on the coffee table before answering. “Well, what the hell else is there to do in this town for fun?” he said unapologetically as he leaned back in his chair and cupped his hands behind his shaved head. “I gotta blow off steam somehow. I can’t keep watching Li and Dez play video games every day. I’ll go insane!”
“Does everyone still go to
Papillon
?”
“Yeah, I hear it’s packed almost every night.”
“What’s
Papillon
?” Andy asked.
“It’s a nightclub in the Meatpacking District,” he murmured, still looking pensive. “You know if Luke still goes?” he asked Danny.
“Probably. Sean’s there at least three nights a week, so Luke’s gotta be there too.”
Ben stood up and announced that it was time to go. “Thanks, man.”
“Hey, easy day, brother,” said Danny. “Part of me wants to know what you’re up to, but the rest of me doesn’t wanna know a thing.”
From his backpack, Ben pulled out the second kilo of cocaine that he’d promised. However, Danny waved it away. “Nah, man. What you gave me last time was enough. Just tell Jim to bring me some food when he comes if you got any to spare. Something other than eggs or apples.” Then he whispered out of earshot of the girls, “Hey, I know I give Dez shit for almost every word that comes outta his mouth, but I admit he’s right about those girls. They’re gorgeous, particularly that Isabel. Instead of a kilo of coke, I’ll take one night with her.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along,” Ben replied sarcastically.
“Seriously, what did you do? Go to L.A. and find all the leftover models and movie stars or something?”
“I met them all just like I met you—by accident.”
As Ben chucked, Danny shooed away the gibe with a wave of his hand. “Whatever, you lucky bastard. Maybe if I looked like you, girls like that would also fall right into my lap too.”
***
Sean looked at his watch with impatience. More than five minutes had passed since one of the guards went to find him a hazmat suit. After another five minutes, the guard finally arrived. He was wearing a cumbersome blue hazmat suit and carrying another.
“Jesus Christ! How long does it take to find a suit? Aren’t they supposed to be kept in this room and not beyond this door?”
From within the confines of the suit, the guard nodded up and down meekly, and a muffled “sorry” was heard from beneath his helmet.
Sean snatched the suit out of the guard’s hands and hastily put it on. “Let’s go!” he barked once all the seals and zippers were closed. The guard wordlessly obeyed, and after passing through two hermetically sealed safe rooms, they stopped at the prep room to recheck their suits. Satisfied that everything was in order, Sean gave a nod to keep going. Once inside the next room, he turned on the safelight and carefully opened the medical freezer.
Inside were seven small glass vials sitting on a metal tray. Sean carefully picked one up with his gloved hand and examined it. The contents of the vial looked like water and appeared to be equally as harmless.
In the six years since it had been unleashed on the world, the virus had never been called anything else. It didn’t need a unique name, for it had entirely redefined the meaning of the word. The explosion at Fort Detrick had destroyed most of the vials and all the research documents, but these had miraculously survived.
Sean placed the vial back in the freezer and closed the door before turning to the guard. “When was he infected?”
“Uh, eight days ago.”
“Then let’s get moving.”
The guard opened the cipher door to what was referred to as the “vacuum room” before approaching the final safe room. Beyond that was their destination.
“The Pit” was nothing but an empty room, cold and sterile. The windows had been sealed off and covered to suppress the faintest beam of light from the outside world. A single florescent light bulb high above in the ceiling gave the room meager illumination.
The guard remained by the door while Sean approached the only prisoner in the room, a boy who had been caught stealing food from one of the food banks. Though only a few millimeters of protective material guarded him from infection, Sean stepped forward to get closer to the boy.
Wearing only the thinnest of hospital gowns, he was experiencing nearly all of the major symptoms: large, puss-filled boils on his arms and legs, uncontrollable shivering despite suffering from a fever, and profuse sweating. Death would come within hours, but not without severe pain. Soon his lungs would fill with blood. In the end, the virus simply asphyxiated its victims to death.
In his agony, the boy barely registered Sean’s presence. The intense shivering and pain numbed all senses to anything outside of his own skin. He knew his end was near and it couldn’t come fast enough. Suddenly, a gloved hand grabbed his arm, and seconds later a needle was inserted into a vein in his forearm and a liquid was injected into his body.