Mount Dragon

“You all right, Carson?” The calm voice of de Vaca over the private intercom channel shamed him into rationality. He nodded, stepping into the antechamber that housed the drying mechanism.

Two minutes later, they entered the Fever Tank. The global alarm droned quietly in the empty corridors, and the distant drumming of the chimps sounded like a muffled riot. Carson looked up at the white walls, searching for a clock: almost twelve-thirty. The corridor lights were on low, and would stay that way until the decontamination crew entered at 2 A.M. Only this time—with a little luck—there wouldn’t be anything left to decontaminate.

“We have to access the security substation,” came de Vaca’s voice. “You know where it is, right?”

“Yeah.” Carson knew only too well. The Level-5 security substation was located on the lowest level of the Fever Tank. Directly below the quarantine area.

They moved quickly through the corridors to the central core. Carson let de Vaca descend first, then grabbed the handrails and went down the tube himself. Above his head he could see the huge uptake manifold that, in a few minutes, might be spewing superheated air throughout the facility.

The substation was a cramped circular room with several swivel chairs and a low ceiling. Five-inch terminal screens marched in orderly rows around the curve of the walls, showing a hundred views of the empty Fever Tank. Beneath them, a command console jutted into the room.

De Vaca took a seat in front of the console and began typing, slowly at first, then more rapidly.

“Now what the hell do we do?” Carson asked, thrusting a fresh air hose into the valve of his suit.

“Hold your water, cabron,” de Vaca said, lifting one gloved hand to press her communications button. “It’s just like Pavel said it would be. All the safeguards here are to prevent a breach from occurring. They never thought to install safeguards against someone deliberately triggering a false alarm. Why should they? I’m going to bring the stage-zero crisis parameters back on-line, and then initiate the alert!”

“And then we’ll have how long to get out?”

“Plenty of time, believe me.”

“How long is that, exactly?”

“Stop bothering me, Carson. Can’t you see I’m busy? Just a few more commands, and we’re in business.”

Carson watched her type. Then he spoke again, more quietly. “Susana, let’s think about this a moment. Is this really what we want to do? Destroy the entire Level-5 facility? The chimps? Everything we’ve worked for?”

De Vaca stopped typing and turned to face him. “What other choice do we have? The chimps are goners anyway, they’re all exposed to X-FLU. We’ll be doing them a favor.”

“I know that. But a lot of good has come out of this facility. It would take years to reproduce the work that’s been done in here. We know what’s wrong with X-FLU now, we can correct the process.”

“If we get our asses shot off, who’s going to fix X-FLU?” came de Vaca’s angry voice in his headset. “And if some nut gets his hands on the stuff, who’s going to care about the damage we do to GeneDyne’s bottom line? I’m going to—”

“Carson,” came the severe tone of Nye. “De Vaca. Listen to me carefully. Effective immediately, your employment at GeneDyne is terminated. You are now trespassers on GeneDyne property, and your presence in the Level-5 facility must be assumed a hostile act. If you decide to surrender, I can guarantee your safety. If not, you will be hunted down and dealt with. There is no possibility of escape.”

“So much for the video cameras,” de Vaca muttered.

“He might be monitoring the private channel,” Carson replied. “Say as little as possible.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m there.” De Vaca’s typing slowed. Then she reached over and, lifting a hinged security grille protecting a bank of black switches, flipped the topmost switch.

Immediately, a loud tone sounded above the wail of the emergency siren, and an array of warning lights in the ceiling began to blink.

Attention, came a calm feminine voice in his headset that Carson had not heard before. A stage-zero alert will initiate in sixty seconds.

De Vaca threw a second switch, then stood back, kicking over the console with one gloved foot for good measure. A shower of sparks leapt across her suit.

Fail-safe activated, the feminine voice said. Alert commit sequence bypassed.

“Now you’ve done it,” Carson said.

De Vaca punched the emergency global button on the communications panel of her bluesuit, broadcasting her words across the Mount Dragon PA system. “Nye? I want you to listen to me very carefully.”

“There’s nothing for you to say except yes or no,” Nye replied coolly.

“Listen up, canalla! We’re in the security substation. We’ve initiated a stage-zero alert. Total, unprejudiced sterilization.”

“De Vaca, if you—”

“You can’t back it down, I’ve already initiated the commit. Do you understand? In a few minutes Level-5 will be flooded with thousand-degree air. The whole damn place will go up like a Viking funeral. Anyone within a three- hundred-yard radius will turn into beef jerky.”

As if in punctuation, the calm voice returned on the global channel: Stage-zero alert initiated. You have ten minutes to evacuate the area.

“Ten minutes?” Carson said. “Jesus.”

“De Vaca, you’re more insane than I thought,” came the voice of Nye. “You can’t succeed. Do you hear me?”

De Vaca barked a laugh. “You’re calling me insane?” she said. “I’m not the one out there every day in the desert, in pith helmet and ponytail, bobbing up and down like a goddamn dragoon.”

“Susana, shut up!” Carson barked.

There was dead silence over the intercom.

De Vaca turned toward him, brows knitted in anger. Then her expression quickly changed.

“Guy, look at that,” she said on the private channel, pointing over his shoulder.

Turning, Carson faced the wall of video monitors. He scanned the countless small black-and-white images, uncertain of what had caught de Vaca’s attention. The laboratories, passages, and storage areas were still and deserted.

Except one. In the main corridor just beyond the entrance port, a single figure was moving. There was a stealth and deliberation to the figure’s movements that chilled Carson’s blood. He moved closer to the monitor, staring intently. The figure was wearing the kind of bulky biosuit with extended internal oxygen used exclusively by the security staff. In one hand was a long black object that looked like a policeman’s nightstick. As the bulky biosuit moved closer, walking directly beneath the camera, Carson could see that the object was a double-barreled pistol- grip shotgun.

Then he noticed the figure’s gait. Every now and then there was an odd hitch in the walk, as if a leg joint had momentarily come loose.

“Mike Marr,” de Vaca murmured.

Carson moved his glove to his sleeve to reply, then stopped. His instincts told him that something else was wrong; terribly wrong. He stood motionless, trying to figure out what had triggered his subconscious alarm.

Then the realization hit him like a hammer.

Throughout the countless hours he’d spent in the Fever Tank—through all the many communications beeps, tones, and voices that had sounded in his headset—there had run one steady, continuous sound: the reassuring hiss of the air hose connected to his suit.

Now the hiss was gone.

Reaching down quickly, Carson disconnected the air hose from his suit valve, grabbed for another line, snapped it home.

Nothing.

He turned to de Vaca, who had been watching his movements. Comprehension grew in her eyes.

“The bastard’s turned off the air supply,” came her voice.

You have nine minutes to evacuate the area.