The Sapporo Outbreak (6 page)

She'd taken this same journey - there and back - Monday to Friday for the last two years. Over an hour travelling from her home on Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn over to the Manhattan School of Music in Claremont Avenue, even more during peak hour. Most people hated the commute, but Rachel didn't really mind it. It gave her a break from the cramped noise of home and her way of getting to the MSM - the place she loved more than any other. The only place she really felt she
belonged
.

Even if it meant a few late nights sharing an ice-cold subway platform with a scattered collection of disgruntled commuters and drunks.

Hot breath rising like steam clouds from her nostrils, she zipped open her thick down jacket, took out her phone and started flicking through her music library. She had last weekend's recital on here somewhere, and now was as good a time as any to listen to it. Out of the corner of her eye, Rachel caught a flurry of movement at the bottom of the Avenue D stairs. She looked up to see three men - two black, one white, all in their early twenties - and the few travellers on the platform scurrying to get out of their way.

What the hell? They must be freezing their asses off
, Rachel thought as she watched the shirtless men walk onto the platform. Rachel looked a little closer. The men were walking in concert, their backs pressed to each other forming a tight circle. Their heads jerked from side to side, like birds of prey. They would lurch forward, then crouch down - heads twisting. It was bizarre - and unnerving. The young men seemed terrified and yet oblivious to the people around them. Their red raw eyes tell tale signs - these guys were junkies. They were moving fast - ten or maybe fifteen seconds away and closing in quickly.
 

Rachel started backing away from the bizarre group.
   

Just then another 2 train clanked noisily toward the station, lighting up the platform as it came. Horrified, Rachel stopped - too terrified to breathe. She stared at the blood dripping from the nearest man's eyes - or at least where his eyes had been. There was raw flesh where the eyes should have been and thick coppery gore smeared across his chest. In the distance,
 
there was screaming and shouting. Rachel stopped and pressed her back against the grimy tiled wall. To numb to move, she watched helplessly as the men twitched and snapped their way toward her. They were almost on her now, and Rachel could hear them - low animal growls. Like - like frightened caged animals. Acting as one, the group crouched, seconds away. Rachel started to cry, she didn't want to die here - on the cold concrete platform.

With a savage roar, the men sprang forward. Teeth bared, arms flailing, clawing at the air. Rachel flinched.

The three bodies slapped against the oncoming train, the ugly noise echoing through the near empty subway station; the screech of the old train grinding to a halt the only other sound. The early morning commuters dotted around the platform stared silently, struggling to believe what they'd just seen.

Slowly, tentatively, Rachel forced herself forward, one tiny step then another. Hearing her movement, a small Hispanic woman turned away from the gruesome scene, turned in a daze and muttered "They
attacked
a train. They attacked ... a ...
train
!"
 

CHAPTER TWO

Incubation

8pm Tuesday, Santa Clara County (Minus 26 Hours)

Head throbbing, eyes stinging, neck and shoulders jammed up in knots, Detective Steve Clark had been hunched over his desk for what seemed like hours. His desk seemed two sizes too small for his powerful frame - his fingers just a little too big for the touchscreen he was operating.

Play. Pause. Rewind. Play. Pause.

Clark had gone over the video from Sandra Brennan's attack in the Baylands again and again. There was something here. Something really important, right in front of him, hidden in plain sight.

"This is ridiculous" Clark muttered under his breath. Frustrated, he pressed a sausage finger onto the screen and the crazed girl's face froze, twisted and contorted in rage.

Clark stood up from his desk, pushed his chair back and arched his back. "What the hell, c'mon think!"

He shared this room, a wing off the main police station, with three other detectives - all of whom, Clark growled to himself, would be home and fast asleep right now.
 

Clark's eyes were stinging. He hated this sort of office work, hated fiddling with technology. He rubbed his eyes. Man, sitting in the dark watching video over and over again wasn't good. He'd probably end up needing glasses if he kept this...

Clark stopped. He looked again at the image of the girl staring out from the screen on his desk.

Those eyes.
 

Filled with fear and rage, blood pouring from self inflicted wounds, shreds of pink skin where her eyelids once were. What would make a girl that age tear at her eyes like that. What would make her rip her own eyelids? The doctors had explained it with the sort of pyscho-garbage Clark was deeply sceptical about. Something about self-harm wrapped up in psychosis was all Clark could remember.

But what if it had been something simpler?
 

What if something she'd seen had driven her to kill?

Clark slowly lowered himself back into his chair, picked up his smartphone and growled the name of someone he knew that might be able to help. A friend who'd helped him figure out things the last time he'd hit a dead end.

The phone rang four, five, six times before a familiar voice on the other end of the phone answered.

"Ben Skinner"

#

Lewis Dodgson worked as the Chief Product Architect for Hartec, an online security company in Seattle, Washington. He was recognised by those who knew him well as a supremely gifted software engineer and a genius in a city filled with very smart people.

He was also a very difficult young man.

A brilliant student, Dodgson had breezed through academic studies and at 23 collected a Masters in Computer Science from the University of Washington. It had all been so easy.

The contrast with his personal life was stark.
 

Three days after Dodgson's seventh birthday, his father, a philosophy professor died during a climate change protest in downtown Seattle. Protestors had attacked the offices of British Petroleum, police intervened and in the clash Dodgson's father had fallen and cracked his skull on a fire hydrant. Despite claims to the contrary by fellow protestors, friends and family, his father's death was ruled accidental, and no charges were ever laid.
 

Dodgson's mother was a bohemian musician and artist, a warm and gregarious woman. She met his father at her first art exhibition when both were starting second year studies at Washington University. His mother would often claim that they hadn't spent a night apart since that first meeting, all those years ago.

She was devastated by the loss of her husband, and sickened by what she felt was the public's morbid fascination with her husbands death. One day after the public inquiry ended with all parties exonerated, Dodgson's mother left Seattle. Taking her young son with her, she started a new life in a commune on Orcas Island in the northwestern corner of Washington State.
 

The years he spent with his mother on that small island were the best - and worst - of his life. The conditions were harsh and life was tough for a small introspective boy used to the comforts of home. He felt out of place among the tight knit circle of artists, writers, musicians, hippies, dropouts and eccentrics. But despite it all, he had his mother. The sudden death of is father had left a deep scar in the sensitive boy, and he had turned to his mother with a ferocious attachment. His mother understood the brittle brilliance of her only son, and nurtured him with endless love and attention. They were inseparable.

And then, just two months before Dodgson's 12
^th
birthday, his mother began complaining of headaches, nausea and stiffness in her neck. Six days later she was diagnosed with a grade 4 brainstem glioma. The day before his 12
^th
birthday, Dodgson sat alone in a sterile hospital room and watched his mother die.
 

Not yet a teenager, Dodgson already saw the world for what it was. Faceless men had murdered his father with impunity. They had forced his mother to spend the last few years of her young life with strangers on a cold, remote rock. They had destroyed the people he loved. And no one was going to do anything about it.

Except Lewis Dodgson.

The next few years were a blur as he was passed from relative to relative. Although he was treated well, Dodgson couldn't bring himself to trust the adults in his life, and retreated into his studies. When that wasn't enough he'd escape everyday life, Dodgson would immerse himself in online worlds, free from the mortality of everyday life. Dodgson entered university with a near perfect grade, offset by almost no interpersonal skills.
 

By the time Dodgson left University, his genius was widely recognised. To those that met him, something else was very obvious. Dodgson harboured a deep bitterness, resentment ... anger ... toward society and authority.

His anger festered - and a plan was formed.

Rejecting more lucrative offers from startups, communications and software companies, Dodgson eventually accepted an offer from a company which sold security software for social media networks and online games. Despite his sarcastic, dismissive communication style, Dodgson quickly rose through the ranks. The company, propelled by his genius, won larger and larger contracts until, three years after joining, Dodgson was appointed Chief Architect and his employer had become the world's fastest growing online security provider.
 

Andy Harper, the charismatic founder and CEO of Hartec quickly recognised Dodgson as the most gifted member of the firm. News of Dodgson's innate ability quickly got him noticed, and just after 8pm on a wet autumn night in the office, Dodgson had been ushered up to Harper's executive suite.
 

After the briefest of introductions, Dodgson had launched into a twenty-minute monologue, detailing several flaws he'd already noticed in Hartec's enterprise security software, pointing out each one with a disdainful sneer. Harper was infuriated by Dodgson's confidence. No, not confidence. By his naked
arrogance
. But Harper could see beyond the odd young man's manner. He knew right then that Lewis Dodgson would make him an even richer man. And for Andy Harper, money was life's scorecard.
 

Nothing had come easy for Harper. His mother was a soft soul, smart, understated and quietly successful as a junior partner in a local accounting firm. His father was a tall, handsome man. His chiselled features and easy wit made him a natural salesman. And a serial womaniser. Harper watched during his teenage years as his mother determinedly ignored his father's ever-more flagrant affairs. At first Harper was disgusted by his father's cruelty. But over time his anger grew to frustration, and shifted to his mother. Harper couldn't understand his mother's passive acceptance, her lack of fight. Until one day, three weeks before final exams, Harper arrived home from school to find his mother sitting alone in the kitchen. Silently staring into space. His father had left her for some woman half his age, and had cleared out their shared bank account as his final act.
 

Harper sat in that kitchen, silently holding his mother's hand and waited. Time passed wordlessly, until his mother took a sharp breath in, turned to her son with a look of resolve and said, "Well Andy, that's that. Now you have a decision to make. You can go with your father or stay with me. Whatever you decide, I'll always love you."

Harper had watched his mother, dignified and brave, smiling warmly at her only son. A shattered woman. A devoted mother.

"All my life you've taken the load. Now I'm here to share it. You deserve a life much better than this - and I'm going to make that happen."
 

Harper had started true to his word. An average grade student, he surprised everyone at the finals with solid grades and a near perfect math performance. The combination was just enough for him to scrape into college, which he paid for by working night jobs at an IT helpdesk. In his second year at college, he discovered a talent for coding, and dropped out in his third year to start a new business selling security software he'd written to small companies.
 

As the years passed by, Harper had learned that he was an above average software developer, but an outstanding salesman. He'd sold large companies on a new kind of security system. One that protected information in every device at home, in the office and in the pocket. Harper's sales pitch resonated with large companies struggling to operate in a hyper-connected and mobile world. As the contracts were signed, Harper would hire bright young developers to deliver what he'd claimed the software could do, and his luck held out.
 

Harper celebrated his fortieth birthday with the second and only other Hartec shareholder. His sixty seven year-old mother.

The was the same month that he hired Lewis Dodgson.

Two years later, thanks in large part to Harper's sales skills and Dodgson's technical brilliance, Hartec had tripled in value. Andy Harper was a very wealthy man, as were a few of the Hartec 'inner circle' - including Lewis Dodgson.
 

It was then that Harper asked Dodgson to take charge of the biggest project in Hartec's history. To design, build and manage a security system for Hartec's most lucrative client. The world's largest online game provider.
 

WhiteStar Corporation.
 

#

11pm Tuesday Washington D.C (Minus 26 Hours)

Moving with practiced efficiency Skinner logged in and worked through the communications of the day, then threw everything he needed into a travel bag, grabbed his passport and was back in the rear of the Lexus on his way to Ronald Reagan Airport. Skinner's view on the driver had firmed. His unfailingly polite demeanour and hawkish vigilance were undeniably ex-military. Judging by the man's age, he must've left the forces fairly recently.