“I think that might be the best news I’ve heard all day. I see a bunch of disabled contacts on my tactical; what’s the sitrep?”
“Zapped down with a mass stun spell,” Roslyn told him. “And they’re staying down. Response appears to be similar to the prior victims that underwent bioscan. Comatose.”
“Fuck.” The Marine was silent for a second. “But they’re alive?”
“They’re alive. Dr. Breda is examining blood samples and plotting stungun recalibrations,” she told him. “But…my spell cleaned the air around them as well. Not sure stunguns would do the same.”
“Likely not,” the Marine said. “And it’s not like I have lightning cannon to hand anywhere—but if there’s actually something the Mages can do, Daalman will bring the rest of you down.”
Roslyn snorted.
“You mean lead the rest of the Mages down herself,” she said. “Yes. And if that’s the answer, I’ll be right there with her.”
The six Mages from Huntress’s crew could probably handle ten thousand or so of the infected at a time. It wouldn’t be a fast solution, but…it might just work.
“I’ll keep you informed, Captain,” she told him. “Keep me informed of the situation of the evac zone. I get the feeling that circle is still going to shrink.”
“Unfortunately,” he agreed. “I think we’ve doubled the time you’ve got, so I hope that’s enough.”
“Here’s the samples, Dr. Breda,” Roslyn told the other woman, sliding samples into the analysis unit one at a time. “One from the same teenager, one from a mid-thirties-ish woman, one from a forty-ish male.”
“Working remotely like this sucks,” Breda noted. The analysis unit had a pair of remote-operated arms in the middle of a two-meter-tall cylinder with various tools. It was, by design, next to a full bioscan unit that doubled as a surgical bed.
It wasn’t so much a portable medical analysis unit as it was a remote surgery unit, but the tools had been included anyway. Just in case they were needed for that remote surgery, Roslyn supposed.
“If it gives me the answers I need, I’ll make it up to you however you need, Doctor,” Roslyn promised.
Breda snorted.
“I’ve got part of an answer,” she told the Mage. “Give me a moment to look at the new samples.”
The arms grabbed each sample in turn, taking a tinier amount of each and putting it under a microscope sending images up to the destroyer’s proper medical lab.
“Okay. So, all three samples are averaging four-point-two parts per billion, plus minus five percent,” Breda told them. “Replication level, based on what we’re seeing, is around four hundred parts per billion.
“I ran some…destructive testing on the first blood sample while you were collecting more,” she continued. “The nanites are quite resistant to electric shock, but that resistance falls off rapidly above the designed maximum charge application of SmartDarts.
“It appears to be the magnetic-field aspects of the bioscan that cause the self-destruct,” Breda noted. “I suspect the combination of electrical and electromagnetic fields created by your electrical storm was a perfect counter to their defenses.”
“So, magic is the answer,” Roslyn said quietly. “I can live with that. We can bring in more Mages if we need to. The Link is good for that.”
“I’m forwarding everything I have back to Mars via the Link as soon as we’re done here,” the doctor agreed. “Hopefully, they’ll see something I don’t. Like a way to blanket the entire city in a Mage’s electrical storm.”
“Nothing is coming to mind,” Roslyn admitted. “I’m going to check in with the people tearing apart the base. Maybe they’ve found an answer—but at least we know how to knock down the crowd.”
She paused, then swallowed.
“How long can we leave these people without further medical attention?” she asked.
Breda was silent for at least five seconds.
“My preference would be under ten minutes,” she admitted. “If… If we don’t have a choice, as we don’t, I project long-term degradation of their health outcomes within twelve hours. Twenty-four before anyone starts dying…most likely.”
“We can’t move them,” Roslyn said quietly. “We don’t have the hands; we don’t have anywhere to put them.”
“Knock out everyone and the Governor can send in his people. Hell…if we’re sure we can secure your park, we might be able to send in extra doctors there,” Breda suggested. “I’ll have to talk to the Captain.”
“We might be at that point, if we bring the Mages down,” Roslyn agreed. “I’ll talk to everyone…”
She shook her head. She didn’t want that to be her call…but it probably was.
“Send your data to Mars,” she ordered. “I’m going to have Jordan pull together a conference of you, me, the Captain and the Cardinal-Governor. And while she’s doing that, I’m going to see if my friends underground have any clever ideas.”
Because Roslyn was up to one clever idea—and while that was a hell of an improvement, there was no way they could secure the city in twenty-four hours. Now she knew she could win…which meant it was time to work out how to save more lives.
“We’re just finishing up scratching our heads here,” Corporal Andrews told Roslyn after she linked to the Marine. “The decon chambers look normal enough, but we think we found the oddity.”
“Magnets?” Roslyn suggested.
There was a long silence on the channel, and then Andrews sent her their helmet feed.
“Basically,” they agreed. “How did you guess?”
The video showed a series of solenoids. It took Roslyn a moment to realize they were mounted on a moving bar that looked like it belonged in a car wash.
“This wasn’t even part of the normal decon suite,” they continued. “This bar of electromagnets was above the usual array of gear in the ceiling. We almost missed it.” They sighed. “We did miss the matching bar under the floor until we went looking for it.
“From what I can tell, it sweeps the entire space with an electromagnetic field. How it does that without fucking the electronics in things like our exosuits, I’m not sure, but it didn’t trigger any
