“I don’t know, he was here…” the man suddenly jerked away from Corrin and Fitz, running for the exit yelling, “Heretics!”
Corrin tackled the man and tore his throat out, but it was already too late. An undercurrent of electricity cut the air. It was as if the vines were suddenly coming alive, sending a pulsating tremor through the entire building.
***
Kate watched over Sammy’s shoulder at the signals and words scrolling across the computer engineer’s screen. They had spent the past couple days since Beckham and the others left in the parking garage of the hospital outside Houston, connected to the webbing in the nearby gaping tunnel.
“Woah, did you see that?” Sammy asked.
She pointed at a sudden spike in signaling activity.
“It’s all coming from Vegas,” Sammy said.
Kate thought of her husband and her friends on the mission. She almost couldn’t bear the thought of them out there risking their lives, but she had to focus and play her part.
“Reed and the others should be at the sites where we think the Prophet is by now,” she said.
“Yeah, seems like this influx of activity could be related.”
“What can you tell so far?”
Sammy pointed at some of the words scrolling across the screen. “It seems like we’re advancing faster than the Variants’ expected.”
“Maybe they weren’t ready for us,” Kate said. The unease in her stomach made her question whether she actually believed those words.
“There’s something bad here, though,” Sammy said. She pointed at another message. “Some collaborators are reporting they captured a special ops team.”
Kate resisted the urge to cover her mouth.
“A Canadian team,” Sammy said.
“Oh, God.”
“You okay?”
Kate stepped away from Sammy’s computer. “No… but I have to be. I will be.”
She turned from the monitor. Leslie was still strapped into the network. She and Kate had been taking two-hour turns for the past six straight hours, trying to disrupt the Variants’ communications in Vegas by sending fake messages and commands. So far, they had managed to divert a couple of packs of Variants and groups of collaborators, sending them into the outskirts of the cities where no Allied States troops were.
The more wild goose chases they went on, the better.
“The Variants sound desperate,” Sammy said. “They keep requesting reinforcements, and many have retreated out of the areas where our forces are pushing forward.”
A few guards situated around the parking garage were looking their way, sharing expressions of relief to hear the direction the battle was going.
“I think they might actually be scared,” Sammy said.
Kate hoped she was right.
Footsteps pounded down the stairs to the garage. Ron came running from the stairwell toward them, waving a notebook. “I found something!”
He was nearly out of breath when he slammed the notebook onto the table. On an open page were lists of names. Some were crossed out and others were connected by lines.
“I cross-referenced all the principal investigators of the biodefense and bioengineering related projects under DARPA’s umbrella,” he said.
“And you found a match to all the technologies we’ve uncovered?” Kate asked.
“Not exactly,” Ron said. “There were a few labs that worked with the strain of anthrax we found in that grenade. But there was no overlap with them and the neural engineering groups.”
Kate frowned. “Are you sure we aren’t missing a government lab from that list?”
“Positive,” Ron said. “Those labs in Seattle and Denver were the only places the computer interface and microarray research was taking place.”
“Damn. So how are they connected to DARPA biodefense research?”
“That’s the thing. They aren’t connected. Not really, anyway.”
“So the anthrax samples were—”
Ron flipped to another page in his notebook. “The particular strain we found was a lab-created strain that I tracked all the way back to a Soviet Union program—Biopreparat.”
“Wait, so this is some international plot now?” Sammy asked.
“No, no, no.” Ron waved his hands. “Not even close. Lab records indicate this strain was stored at Fort Detrick in Maryland with USAMRIID. The only people with access to it were biodefense specialists in the government—and a few federal contractor groups.”
“Which contractors?” Kate asked.
“All the usual suspects. Leidon, Blackwell, and BAH. But ignore those.” He jabbed his index finger at a single name on the paper. “Here’s the rub. This company, OrgoProct, was the only contractor I didn’t recognize.”
Kate narrowed her eyes, studying the name. It sounded vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t figure out why. “Where did you find all this stuff?”
“A mixture of public records and old DARPA archives.”
“What do we know about OrgoProct?”
Ron flipped to a page with a map. On it, he had circled various locations, including Seattle and Denver, that had names written next to them. “You remember Dr. Simon Wong from the University of Florida? Well, we already know he was involved in computer-neural interface research that took place in the California Bay area and Seattle.”
He moved his finger to Denver. “There was another research group here led by Dr. Jennifer Yeatts. They specialized in communication networks, mostly digital, cybersecurity-type stuff.”
Next he circled Portland, Oregon. “Dr. Bhushan Reddi had an academic group that focused on genetic engineering of viral agents here.”
“Is that our guy?” Sammy asked.
“I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think so,” Ron said. He continued, pointing to various locations around the former United States and listing names associated with projects investigating technologies that might’ve been related to the Chimeras, webbing network, masterminds, and more.
“All these people were doing DARPA-funded research?” Kate asked.
“Many, but not all.”
“Then how are they connected?”
Ron had never looked so confident and self-assured. “It all goes back to OrgoProct. Each of these people served as a scientific adviser for the organization at one time or another.”
Everything suddenly clicked together for Kate. “Good lord, if it wasn’t someone in DARPA, if it wasn’t some government scientist, their connection is through OrgoProct,” she said.
“Exactly,” Ron said. He rubbed his hands together. “This is what really tipped me off. Several of those unknown compounds we found in the Chimera’s tissues were residuals from the gene delivery system of the modified VX-99 administered to the Chimera.
