The Seraphim Sequence: The Fifth Column 2 (46 page)

Sophia waited to see if the order would go through. She wanted to know if Cecilia was bluffing. The Elohim spoke into his radio.

‘Stop,’ she said.

Cecilia nodded to the Elohim. He withdrew the order.

Sophia needed two things right now. Firstly, she needed to give Cecilia something to keep things moving until the EMP detonated in the command and control room. Secondly, she needed more information. But to give Cecilia something, she needed the information. Which meant she was stuck.

Reverse interrogation was difficult on a psychopath, let alone one as unusually clever as Cecilia. What’s more, it was hard to determine if anything she said was reliable. A psychopath could lie convincingly, and would pass a lie detector test without incident. For Cecilia, truth and lies were one and the same. But when Sophia played the deception game, her conscience betrayed her with psychological signatures that could be picked up by an eye as sharp as Cecilia’s. Cecilia knew the psychological terrain of a human better than a human did.

‘Tell me what the code is for and I’ll tell you where it is,’ Sophia said.

‘You’re stalling,’ Cecilia said. ‘In fact, I’d rather show you. But all in good time.’

‘Tell me or no deal.’

Cecilia smiled. ‘Actually, you’re not stalling at all. Quite the opposite. You’re
rushing
.’

Sophia grew nervous. She did her best to appear relaxed. Cecilia walked to the desk and snatched up the daypack underneath. She looked inside and found the EMP.

‘This is interesting,’ she said, and turned off the timer. ‘Now that we have time on our hands again, I’ll be more than happy to answer your question. That is what you wanted, isn’t it?’

Sophia exhaled slowly. Now she was screwed. She had to rely on the rest of her team now.

‘You never left the Fifth Column, did you?’ she said.

Cecilia sat down in the chair before her. ‘See, now you’re catching on. This is the Sophia I missed. The Sophia who could analyze everything, leave no stone unturned, put the pieces together in a way that no one else could.’ She leaned toward her slightly. ‘But you seem to be missing a piece.’

Sophia blinked. ‘Please enlighten me.’

A grin tugged at one side of Cecilia’s lips. ‘You don’t even know what the code is for, do you?’

‘I have an idea.’

‘Please, I’m all ears.’

‘I’d say Freeman took it. And you’ve been trying to get it back. Am I on the money so far?’

‘Perhaps.’

‘Denton told me the anti-Chimera vector is one aspect of your warfighter program. So I figure the Chimera vector is the other side of the coin,’ Sophia said. ‘But I also figure the core of this program is something you’ve been missing for quite some time. Something that wasn’t really yours to begin with.’ She allowed herself a smile. ‘And it kills you that you’ve come so close and failed.’

‘The virus is mine,’ Cecilia snapped. ‘Denton is impulsive and self-absorbed. Trust me, Sophia, he’s the last person you want playing with something so powerful.’

And there it is, Sophia thought. Exactly what I’m looking for. Desperation. It drove even the most experienced interrogator to fill the gaps, and Cecilia had just filled one hell of a gap. She was searching for a virus. A code for a virus. And for some reason she thought Sophia had it.

‘Those installations you’re building,’ Sophia said. ‘They aren’t installations at all. They’re excavations.’

‘Smart cookie,’ Cecilia said. ‘Meteor crash sites, no less. That’s how the first virus was found, many, many years ago. Cometary viruses have a tendency to produce all sorts of interesting genetic variations. It’s where our stories of giants and dwarves come from. And even raging cannibalism. And sometimes even perfection.’

‘Is that where you hoped to find the virus—a meteor crash site? Did you ever succeed?’

‘Oh, it was found many years ago, but then it was lost. You know how you’re looking for something and it’s right in front of you?’ Cecilia said. ‘I know you want to stop me, Sophia, I know you consider what I’m doing to be wrong, but this world needs me. And it needs you. And we need it. If I can’t find this virus again, there will be no world. There will be no
us
.’

‘Yeah, because giving you a virus always ends well,’ Sophia said.

‘This isn’t just any virus!’ Cecilia tossed her chair aside. ‘This is the goddamn Phoenix!’

She was on the edge now, which meant more gaps could be filled.

‘I’m sure you can make do,’ Sophia said. ‘You’ve always been good at that.’

‘No!’ Cecilia yelled. ‘Don’t you get it?’ She took a moment to catch her breath. ‘The greatest shock of genomic science was the discovery that the human genome contains more viral genes than human genes. Do you understand what that means? Our genome is made from thousands of viruses that infected our distant ancestors. The viruses inserted their DNA into ours.’

‘Our DNA isn’t entirely from this planet,’ Sophia said.

‘Exactly,’ Cecilia said.

‘It is the work of God,’ Abraham said softly.

‘You might need to revise that book of yours,’ Cecilia told him. ‘Your God is a virus from outer space.’

Abraham started laughing. ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.’

She aimed the P99 at Abraham and squeezed the trigger. The pistol bucked in her hand and Abraham’s head tore apart. His body jittered in the chair then fell still.

Sophia swallowed. Abraham wasn’t her favorite person, but he hadn’t deserved that.

‘Project Phoenix,’ Cecilia said, ‘the mythical bird that rose from its own ashes. The very first super-soldier project. Before GATE. Before Seraphim. Before you. Before me.’

Sophia was still trying to wrap her mind around what Cecilia was saying. All of this work, the research and development, the test subjects and operatives—it was all spurred by a simple virus.

‘There are many variations of psychopaths that exist today,’ Cecilia continued. ‘Some are more suited to lead, others more suited to follow. A schizoidal psychopath like Marx, Freud, the current US president or even Denton—they possess dull emotions, excellent speculative reasoning, and their ability to manipulate is very effective. But they’re impulsive.’

‘Thrill-seekers,’ Sophia said.

‘Yes. Their downfall is that they can be manipulated effectively. If you put the president under extreme stress he will collapse into a state of schizophrenia. He makes the perfect patsy, but he’s far from perfect. The Phoenix virus, on the other hand, is perfection. It has all the strengths of the psychopath without the weaknesses.’

Sophia remembered that Freeman had called her the Phoenix. Did he mean she was some sort of prehistoric psychopath? But that was ridiculous. Unless she was carrying the virus somehow. Women typically carried the psychopath genes without being psychopaths themselves. But if she was a carrier, then the anti-psychopath Chimera vector she’d unleashed on the world last year would have killed her along with all the other carriers. None of this made sense.

She didn’t have the answers yet, and she needed to buy her team more time. Just a little bit more.

‘Are you hearing this?’ Chickenhead said.

Already he was starting to annoy Denton. ‘Keep walking,’ he said. ‘Cecilia was always into some crazy shit.’

Denton had, in fact, been listening to the conversation very intently. But everything Cecilia had said, he’d heard before during his work with his father during the Second World War. The Nazis had carried out varied and often fruitless research into achieving human perfection. While Hitler was busy absorbing European territory, Denton and his father were assigned to an expedition in Siberia. It was here that his father recovered samples of a virus from a meteor fragment: what Cecilia would later call the Phoenix virus. All livings things had hundreds, thousands of genes imported by viruses. That was after all how Denton was able to insert the Chimera vectors into himself.

After the war, the virus remained in Denton’s father’s possession, its value overlooked for more than forty years until Fifth Column virologists, under Denton’s own command, found retrovirus-like segments in the human genome. They were able to track these segments down to an original functional virus—the Phoenix virus. Project Phoenix was Denton’s first super-soldier project. And his first—and hopefully not his last—attempt to create a super-psychopath.

But first things first: he needed to fry this Seraphim super-array.

He strode along the elevated walkway that snaked through the super-array, Chickenhead in tow with his inane questions. Once Denton was satisfied he’d found the precise center of the super-array, he told Chickenhead to turn around so he could open his daypack and carefully remove the EMP device. Denton kept his EMP device in his own daypack for now.

‘There’s no one in here,’ Chickenhead said.

Denton set the timer to fifteen minutes. ‘And that surprises you?’

‘I’ve been in a constant state of surprise for the last two weeks,’ Chickenhead said. ‘Getting used to it.’

Denton removed the knife from the daypack and pivoted, sliced for the artery in Chickenhead’s inner leg. Chickenhead moved ahead of him, the knife cutting air. Denton tried again, blade running for the jugular. Chickenhead weaved to one side, his hand running along Denton’s arm and catching him across the neck. A fist drilled in below Denton’s ribcage, driving a shockwave of pain further inside and stealing his breath. Gasping, he dropped to one knee.

Chickenhead was twenty feet away, eyes wide.

‘Interesting moves you have there,’ Denton said.

‘There’s more where that came from, mate.’

Chickenhead went for his pistol. It wasn’t there.

Denton was holding it. He smiled. ‘Sorry, kiddo. End of the line.’

***

‘The Phoenix virus was never in a vial,’ Cecilia told Sophia. ‘Freeman didn’t steal it from a fridge. He stole it from Project GATE itself.’

‘I have the virus,’ Sophia said.

‘No, the virus has you. It’s had you since you were born. Did you ever wonder why you didn’t have an inherent ability like all your friends? You have the Phoenix. You were largely unaware, but long before we took you from your family and enrolled you in Project GATE, you were a star pupil of Project Phoenix.’

Sophia’s mind reeled at the thought. She had lived with her family her entire life up until Project GATE. All that time, the Fifth Column had been taking her blood and testing it under the guise of vaccinations. The Fifth Column had been plotting her life before she’d even had a chance to live it.

‘We had several Phoenix candidates in Project GATE,’ Cecilia said. ‘You were the only one who survived the engineered flu exposure. That was our second confirmation that you were genuine.’

Sophia knew exactly what she was talking about. The other three children; the sealed glass cubicles. She’d watched those children die violent deaths around her while scientists scribbled notes on fucking notepads.

‘The Fifth Column had been crunching your DNA for a decade. It’s the reason Denton recruited you,’ Cecilia said. ‘It’s the reason Freeman stole the code and defected from the Fifth Column. It’s the reason I pulled you out of the project and into the Akhana. It’s the reason I allowed you and your friends to survive for so long. Why do you think the shocktroopers in the Philippines never touched you?’

Sophia remembered the shocktrooper in the bank. He just strode right past her. He’d injured her, incapacitated her to the point where she could no longer interfere, but he’d let her live.

‘We couldn’t risk killing you,’ Cecilia said. ‘Although one shocktrooper almost did just that with a misplaced grenade. Had he survived the incident he would have been adequately punished for his direct violation of orders. You see, Freeman only trusted two people in this world. And they’re sitting right before me.’

‘And you’re certain it’s me?’ Sophia said.

Cecilia turned to DC and Sophia followed her gaze. He wasn’t lying on the ground any more, he was standing. His plasticuffs had been cut.

‘Yes,’ Cecilia said. ‘Because he was mine all along.’

‘I’m sorry, Sophia,’ DC said.

Sophia refused to acknowledge him. Instead, she focused on Cecilia.

‘Find Denton and decapitate him with that ridiculous sword of yours,’ Cecilia told DC.

‘Ma’am.’

Sophia watched from the edge of her vision as DC collected Abraham and his men’s pistols, then climbed the stairs to leave. She tried to hold down the centrifuge of anger inside. Her hands were trembling and she knew Cecilia could see them.

‘You’re the blueprint the Nazis were searching for, only you hadn’t been born yet,’ Cecilia said, the P99 still in hand. ‘You’re the blueprint Denton was searching for. You’re the blueprint I was searching for. You should have seen my face when I looked at your blood work. It’s amazing. It’s the reason you were immune to the anti-psychopath Chimera vector.’

‘The anti-psychopath Chimera vector should have killed me,’ Sophia said. ‘I’m a carrier of the psychopath genes. I should be dead.’

She wasn’t saying that because it seemed logical. It also seemed right. She knew she deserved such an end more than most.

‘Couldn’t you just take a blood sample and fuck off?’ she spat.

Cecilia laughed softly. ‘I’ll need quite a lot of blood for all the testing I have planned. And without the code, it would take another decade to isolate the virus. It’s a needle in a haystack I don’t have the time to search for a second time around.’

‘So I’m another of your lab rats?’ Sophia yelled. ‘All of this shit, and for what? So you can lock me up and masturbate over my genetics?’

Cecilia frowned. ‘That’s not quite how I’d put it, but yes. What you have inside you is an inherited endogenous retrovirus. It’s integrated into your DNA. You have the intelligence and resourcefulness of a Phoenix but you lack the cool clarity and logic. You have what is called a partial activation.’

‘Clarity and logic, huh? That sounds like the psychopath part. I can live without that.’

‘With the code, I can begin to isolate and replicate the entire Phoenix virus,’ Cecilia said. ‘Freeman only ever entrusted one other living person with it. I’ve had DC in place for years and Freeman didn’t give him a damn thing.’

‘The code,’ Sophia said, mostly to herself. She remembered the piece of paper Freeman had given her in the mountains. He’d told her it was the access code for the Akhana darknet, but now she knew it was something very different. The code was the chromosomal locations of the Phoenix virus in her own DNA. Cecilia had needed Freeman alive to interrogate the code out of him. No wonder he’d taken his own life before she could capture him.

‘And I suppose you think I have the code?’ she said.

‘I know you have it, dear.’

Sophia had memorized the code, but the moment she handed it over she would lose any leverage she had. Nasira and Jay would be executed, and she would be a Petri dish for Cecilia for a long time to come, possibly forever.

She smiled. ‘Freeman left the Fifth Column. He stole the code and left you with nothing.’

‘This is my final offer!’ Cecilia yelled suddenly. ‘I’ll let your friends live if you give me the code. I’ll let
you
live if you give me the code. And then I will move to the next stage. I’ll even release you once I’ve finished with all the samples I need. You have my word.’

‘Your word dipped in value last year,’ Sophia said.

‘So did your friendships.’

‘I’m curious, what is the next stage?’ Sophia asked. ‘A new army? A new version of shocktroopers?’

‘No,’ Cecilia snapped. ‘The next stage is me.’