“The system’s not responding,” one of the men said. His fingers worked a console to my right.
“Then pull the probe!” the woman snapped.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. Three people stood around me: an older, gray-haired man with a thick beard; a broad-shouldered black man with a large belly; and a gaunt-looking woman who kept her long, thin hair in a ponytail. Probes stuck out of my chest like pins in a pincushion, and readouts streamed on a bank of monitors.
The old man had reached for the probe in my neck, but stopped when my hand and forearm split apart. The blade deployed with a loud bang, and he froze, the tip an inch from his throat. He raised his hands so I could see them.
“Deanimate it!” the woman snapped.
The tray creaked as I sat up. Wires connected to the probes in my chest pulled taut, then the needles clattered to the floor. The virus branched out, infecting all of their security protocols. It disabled the cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, everything. The lethal current running through the perimeter fence faded, then died. The gates unlocked and opened. I placed my bare feet on the cold tile floor as behind me the door to the lab opened, and the three technicians looked past me, toward it.
“Ang, Dulari,” the woman said. “Shut that thing down!”
As she spoke, her pupils dilated, and I fired the injector from my arm. The thin tube whipped through the air, and the needle lodged in the side of her neck. She slapped the spot with one hand, but the needle was already gone. As I watched, the orange glow in her rib cage that pulsed so frantically began to slow down. Her legs gave out, and as she started to fall, the bearded man caught her, his eyes wide with shock.
“She’s alive,” I told him.
“Ang, what are you doing?” the second man demanded.
Two of my three contacts had arrived. Ang Chen, a Chinese man with a dour face, and Dulari Shaddrah, a Pakistani woman whom I suspected might have been beautiful, stepped fully into the room. Dulari put one warm hand on my shoulder. Ang approached the men, a pistol in his hand.
“Back against the wall,” he told them.
“Hold still,” Dulari said in my ear. She carefully removed the probe from my neck, and I felt the circuit cut. I pulled the remaining needles from my chest as she handed me a bag. It contained clothes that had been folded neatly.
“Why did the perimeter go down?” I asked. “You have control of the transmitter array now.”
Dulari smiled weakly. “Don’t worry about that.”
I looked around, but the third man I was supposed to meet was not with them.
“Where’s Deatherage?” I asked.
“We can’t find him,” she said.
“What do you mean, you can’t find him?”
“Security logs show he used his badge at the entrance,” Chen said, “but no one’s seen him.”
“Chen, this is insane,” the older man said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Put her down,” Chen said. The man lowered the unconscious woman to the floor.
“She’s not breathing,” he said.
“The neurotoxin is not lethal,” I said. I opened the bag and began to get dressed. The clothes were plain and a reasonable fit. I thought they might have belonged to Dulari.
“Why’d you dose her?” Chen asked me.
“She’s one of them. She was attempting to influence you.”
He nodded.
“Wait. Stop,” the black man said. He looked past Ang and Dulari at me. “Where did you come from?”
“Just stay here,” I said. “Stay here and don’t make trouble.”
“I know you’re one of ours,” he continued. “I also know that one bayonet is standard for the sevens, not two. Those injectors aren’t standard either. Where did you come from?”
“Listen to me: stay in here, and don’t make trouble.”
“Do as she says,” Chen said. The man stared at the pistol.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “What is this all about?”
As he spoke, what might have been understanding dawned on the second man’s face. I saw his mouth part.
“You’re one of Samuel’s,” he said.
Before I could answer him, I saw an image of Heinlein’s satellite, the defense system that was known as The Eye, flicker onto the display in front of me. As I watched, its nodes were all called out and scanned. One by one, they began to go inactive. I turned back to Dulari.
“The virus,” I said. “It’s—”
“I know.”
Someone shouted from down the hallway outside, where I heard many footsteps tromping closer. The last of the nodes on my display went dark. The Eye had gone inactive. The tarmac surrounding Heinlein Industries was no longer protected.
“Someone’s taken control of the defense satellite!” a voice shouted. “We’re wide open; it’s some kind of attack!”
“Dulari, what is this?” She didn’t answer, and looked away.
“Chen …what have you done?” the black man asked. “What the hell have you two done?”
“Shaddrah, get them out of here,” Chen said.
The men stared as Dulari drew a pistol. She motioned toward the door.
Just then, it opened and another man stuck his head in. His eyes were wide.
“Guys, we have multiple vehicles approaching the complex,” he said. “We need to …”
He saw the guns and trailed off.
“What is going on out there?” the older man asked him.
“Sir, we have confirmation on a wide-scale broadcast of a Huma activation sequence.”
“An activation sequence? From where?”
“It looks like it might have been sourced from the Stillwell compound. Someone with high security clearance snuck in a stealth program that bounced it off a communications satellite maybe twenty minutes ago.”
“What?”
“It gets worse—someone’s inside our system, as well. Campus security has been totally compromised. We’re completely unprotected.”
“He did it,” the black man whispered. “That madman really did it.”
“Shaddrah, get them out of here,” Chen said.
“You heard him,” Dulari said. “Come on, let’s go.”
She looked back and met my eye before she closed the door behind them.
Chen stood over the woman on the floor and watched the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Greta Creigh,” he said.
“Do you know her?”
“I do, yes,” he said. “I thought I did. You’re sure about what you saw? She’s one of them?”
“Yes.”
“One hundred percent sure?”
“Yes.”
He aimed the pistol and fired. The shot slammed through the lab as the bullet blew out the top of the woman’s head in a mess of blood, gristle, and hair.
He stared at the results for a moment, and then, without changing his expression, he fired again.
