wasn’t there — can’t have been more than a second or two. No one can move that quickly — not even you. I sent Mak and Franks out, but after an hour they gave up without finding a trace.’
Alex swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up quickly; he swayed for a second. ‘I’m okay.’ He looked at Aimee’s expression and gave her a smile. ‘Really. I must be dehydrated, that’s all.’
He looked around the room, but his eyes weren’t focused on its interior; he was seeing much further than its four walls. ‘He’s gone now,’ he said softly, then, ‘Sam, with me.’
He was out of the cabin before anyone could say another word.
Sam was one of the few below the rank of general who was aware of Alex’s abilities. He had been on missions where he had seen his commanding officer do things that no other human being was capable of. He knew Alex had a second sense that opened to him a world that was inaccessible to other people. He also knew that Alex Hunter didn’t black out because he was dehydrated.
‘What did you see, boss?’ He had to take long strides to keep up as Alex moved quickly.
‘I don’t know, Sam. As soon as I touched the guy’s hand, everything turned upside down. The images I got were bizarre, openly hostile and definitely not priestly.’
Alex stopped when they reached the centre of the camp. It was completely dark and the perimeter lights were struggling with the limited power supply. In addition, the burning braziers now only gave off a dull red glow, looking like portholes to the bowels of hell.
‘I want a watch tonight,’ Alex ordered. ‘You and I first, then Franks and Mak can relieve us in six hours. Keep everyone inside the perimeter. At first light, we’ll pay a visit to the
Sam nodded. ‘You got it, boss. Hey, take it easy.’
He recognised the look in Alex’s eyes — it wouldn’t take much of a push before the furies were let loose, and then … Alex Hunter was capable of a lot of good, but when the rage took hold, then sometimes
‘Yes, Maria, no, Maria, of course I verified the results, Maria, and no, I didn’t make a mistake.’ Michael mimicked his mother’s voice as he checked the results of the thermal-shock process. ‘Hey, don’t like the cold, do you?’
The Hades bacteria had been rendered dormant at the low temperature. Michael also noticed that the cells in a state of dormancy had developed a protein coat, but had quickly germinated and reactivated when the temperature was increased. At 2000 degrees, as if a switch had been flipped, the same results manifested — black, inanimate, useless dust.
‘
Michael stood with his hands on his hips, staring into the isolation cube as its walls swirled with colour while it cooled. He sniffed — Maria had been right; he could smell something too. He removed his glove and placed his fingers on the glass, pulling them away almost instantly — it was still too hot to touch safely. But he was sure he’d felt a slight roughness on the normally smooth surface.
He bent down to look closer, but could see nothing. He searched in one of the equipment boxes they had brought with them, removed a small but powerful magnifying glass and held it up to the box, moving it in and out to adjust the focus until he could see the surface of the box clearly. Fine, almost invisible cracks ran throughout the depth of its panes.
Michael stood up and looked towards the ceiling. ‘So much for withstanding temperatures to 3000 degrees.’ He rolled one hand into a fist and punched his forehead. ‘She’ll murder me!’
He bent to examine the box again, then frowned, and turned back to the equipment pack. He took out a glass slide and swab, replaced his gloves, then wiped the swab down the side of the glass cube. He transferred the sample to the slide, squeezed a drop of sterile water onto it, and placed it under a manual microscope. He twirled the focus dial several revolutions until he had his desired clarity.
Michael sat back, thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Well, I’m out of ideas.’ He exhaled and stood up slowly. Much as he hated it, he needed to ask Maria what to do next, and inform her of the failing isolation cube.
He stretched his back and turned to the door, pushing the hood of his suit back to expose his perspiration- slicked hair. He pulled off his gloves and, with one hand, opened the door. With the other, he wiped his brow, transferring a small black smudge from his finger to his forehead.
If he had looked one last time through the microscope, he would have seen something that might have worried him more than a broken piece of equipment. On the glass slide, among the floating fragments, sub- microscopic buds were beginning to appear on some of the biological splinters. Gradually, the buds opened and extended cytoplasmic stalks; a moment later, cell division restarted.
Maria listened to her son with an impassive face as he told her about the bacteria’s development of a protein seed coating at lower temperatures. She knew that their options had been limited to start with; and were now probably exhausted. Without any form of realistic, natural or derived immunological defence, the human race had no hope of winning a microscopic physiological war with the Hades Bug. And losing to this particular microorganism meant a very unpleasant death. For the first time in her life as a scientist, Maria considered euthanasia as an option.
Michael broke her concentration. ‘What now? Should I try to chemically attenuate? We didn’t bring many compounds. I’m still thinking the radiation option would—’
‘No!’ Maria yelled, and Michael recoiled as though slapped.
She immediately regretted using the sharp tone, and exhaled wearily. She wished she could tell him. The radioactive material she had brought wasn’t the simple shortwave Rontgen radiation used for X-rays. Instead, it was the infinitely more powerful lithium-deuterium particles required for an elastic collision — a million times too much energy for simple bacterial attenuation.
She softened her voice. ‘No, Michael, for now we document our results and concentrate on other, less elegant defensive mechanisms. We can still consider gross amputation for extremity contamination, and, out of the body, surely it must be vulnerable. Let’s look at what kills it — sodium hypochlorite should at least explode the cell walls.’
She reached over and rubbed her son’s arm, smiling into his face. She was often brusque with him, but in her heart she knew he was the only good thing to come out of her marriage. One day she’d tell him that. He frowned, probably not understanding the reason for the sudden show of maternal affection.
‘You’ve done a good job,’ she went on. ‘But I think its rapid transmission is a good thing — as long as we can totally isolate the infected men, then we can let the disease run its course; let it burn itself out.’
She knew that probably wasn’t true anymore — the genie was out of the bottle. Unlike South Africa, there would be no simple sealing of a hole in the ground here. This wound had ruptured and cauterisation would not be enough; total excision of the necrotic flesh was needed. There was no way of knowing for how long the Hades Bug could go dormant; it could remain in that state for weeks, years … centuries? They still knew next to nothing about it.
She felt she was being pushed towards a precipice. A paragraph from Protocol 9 leapt into her mind:
She looked at Michael, her only child.
TWENTY-FIVE
While Alex went to talk to Franks and Mak at the start of their rotation, Sam performed one last outer
