Six months after gaining your third PHD and less than a year before you were institutionalised. It was your father who had you sectioned wasn't it? Just after your mother died. As I recall, the judge agreed you were a danger to yourself. Sad little Matthew Greaves, such a promising start you had, such a pathetic waste of potential your life has been ever since.'
Greaves knew what Sinnot was trying to do. He wasn't going to be distracted though. He wouldn't rise to the taunts. He was under pressure to turn this situation to his advantage. He wouldn't buckle this time. He was stronger now.
Things had been different back then. There had been so much expectation about his work. So many job offers. His peers were envious and in awe of him. Everyone was waiting to see when he was going to trip and fall. The tension was too great. Rather than trip he dived head first over the edge. His mother died, then his nerve went and for a short while so did his mind.
'A whole decade and nothing to show for it,' said Sinnot. 'Three PHDs and you couldn't even get a job flipping burgers. Then one of my colleagues recognised your name on a job application. She took pity on you and convinced me to take you on. We threw you a few tiny crumbs of research to occupy you while you did your menial chores and suddenly you think you're leading the project. Such pathetic delusions of grandeur.'
Sinnot was twisting the truth. But then he always had. They'd thrown him more than a few crumbs of research. They were getting nowhere when they hired him as a lab assistant. The researchers had all read his papers, so they began discussing theories and problems with him in the canteen.
After a while he was attending weekly debriefings. He went over their findings with meticulous care and suggested new lines of enquiry. Suggestions that led to breakthroughs and the project's first real successes. He hadn't done this alone, but they had been struggling until he joined the project.
The whole time this was happening Sinnot had been promising Greaves a full time research fellowship. Dangling it in front of him like a carrot. But the fellowship never materialised and they kept paying him the tiny pittance he got as a lab assistant.
Sinnot never ran out of excuses as to why Greaves hadn't been made a fellow on the project. It was always just around the corner, it was only a matter of funding, or bureaucratic procedure, or a company policy hurdle that needed to be overcome.
Finally Sinnot realised that Greaves knew far too much about a project his shadowy pay masters wanted to keep secret. He probably figured it was cheaper to get rid of Greaves than to buy him off with a fellowship and tie him into the project. Whatever the case, Greaves narrowly escaped with his life and went underground.
He'd spent the year leading up to The Cull hiding under an assumed identity, learning as much as he could about the shadow government funding the Doomsday Virus. The hidden cabal of power brokers who make all the real decisions about how the world is run. Most of them were ultra-right wing trillionaires who'd gotten rich raiding the funds of the world's military industrial complex. There wasn't a scrap of information about them in the public domain. But no political ruling was made without their sanction.
'Don't think your amateurish attempt to disable our locks will buy you any time,' said Sinnot. 'And your inadequate effort to hack into our intranet has already failed.'
'That's what I want you to think,' said Greaves. He was now seconds from finishing. This would wipe the smug look off Sinnot's face. 'The second you realised I was hacking the intranet, you naturally attempted to isolate the mainframe I was working on and disable it. The first thing I did was install a programme that would make you think you had done just that. It was simply a matter of distracting you while I finished what I was actually doing. Which, in case you're wondering, is this.' Greaves typed in the last bit of executive sub-coding and pressed the Enter key.
'What have you done Greaves?' said Sinnot. He suddenly looked worried.
'It's a rather superior bit of viral software I've been working on,' said Greaves. 'It compresses every bit of information in your whole system by half every sixty seconds. Every single bit of research, every equation, every memo, folded in half and half again, every minute on an infinite cycle. The longer you leave it working the longer it will take to decompress and retrieve the information. Any attempt to stop this happening will result in every bit of information you have, years and years of research, being wiped without trace. If you try and retrieve the information from back up sources this will simply activate the virus all over again. The only way to reverse this is by inputting a variable code.'
'What do you want for the code?' Sinnot said.
'I and my colleagues are going to leave here with the Doomsday virus. You are going to give us safe passage to the edge of the plateau. We've taken a hostage, Joe Black Feather, who was working in the Virology Farm. He will accompany us across the plateau to prevent you attacking us. When we're far enough away, we'll send Joe back with the code.'
'How do we know you won't just kill him?'
'You don't. You'll just have to trust us.'
Sinnot leaned to one side, talking to someone off-screen. He leaned back into shot and smiled. 'I've got a better idea. How about you give yourselves up right now and we'll let you live long enough to give us the code to retrieve all our files?'
'And what makes you think we'd do that?'
'Well, our little conversation has been somewhat diverting, if a tad tedious, but then you always had that failing I'm afraid Greaves. You see I'm also capable of distracting you while I finish what I'm actually doing. Which, in case you might be wondering is this.'
A high pitched cacophony of screams came from the room full of caged animals. Greaves rushed into the room. All the creatures in the cages were writhing and twitching with pain. Blood was running from the eyeballs and noses of those who weren't shrieking with agony. Giant welts and blisters were appearing on the skin of others.
'What have you done?' Greaves shouted.
'It's a fast-acting mutant strain of the Ebola virus, designed to be airborne. We introduced it into the air supply of those labs, right after we hermetically sealed them. We'll have to sterilise the area afterwards, but you'll be dead by then. Unless of course you surrender this instant and give us the code to decompress all our files. Oh and you only have a few minutes to decide. After that the virus will start to take effect on you and the antidote won't work. You'll die a death a thousand times worse than these vermin.'
Many of the animals lay dead now, their insides eaten away by the virus.
'What about Joe?' said Greaves. 'You're not going to let him die. He's too useful to the project.'
'Joe is sealed in the virology farm, in a bio-hazard suit. You saw to that for us.'
'What about Anna then? You must know who she is. Surely she's too valuable to allow her to die?'
'We know exactly who she is. Thank you for finding her for us. Though she's not as valuable as you think. We have been growing new hosts in her absence. Her DNA will be useful to our studies, but we can extract that from her corpse.' Sinnot was lying, Greaves could tell. It didn't help him any though.
Nearly all the animals were dead now. Greaves coughed and put his hand to his mouth. It was flecked with blood and phlegm. He didn't have much time. None of them did. Suddenly he was a million miles from being 'home again' and Thomas Wolfe was right after all.
He hung his head. 'Alright. You win.'
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was the largest army of Native Americans that had ever marched. There were braves and squaws from every tribe in the land. Never had Hiamovi seen his people so united.
Since the motion to raise an army and march on Little Bighorn had been passed, growing bands of warriors had made the perilous journey to Montana from every part of the country.
The fact that they were marching to a showdown with the white man at the site of the greatest Native American victory was seen as an incredible omen by most of those assembled. There was a high sense of purpose among all the volunteers who had gathered to fight. A spiritual fervour was in the air. The Fifth Age of Man was nearly upon them.
