The Serophim Breach (The Serophim Breach Series) (42 page)

“So you didn’t alter anything with the rest of the nanites?” she pressed.

“Too expensive,” Nathan answered. “And besides, it made perfect sense. Without the radio transmission, they stop functioning. So we put all our safeguards into that program.”

“Josie?” Hammond was looking at her questioningly.

She took a second to gather her thoughts and then quickly explained to them that the particles couldn’t function without a radio signal to direct their activity. Each particle was too small to carry enough code to fully animate itself, so all nanotechnology required a transmission to control it. But in order for the technology to translate into the medical field efficiently, Argo needed to incorporate the transmitter in such a way that would not inconvenience the patient. No one would want to use an antidepressant if they had to remember to keep a cell-phone-size radio transmitter within ten feet of their body at all times.

So they had built one that, while fifteen times larger than the other particles, was still microscopic in size and therefore could be carried in the bloodstream with the other nanites.

“We revised the code for the transmitter after the first animal trials, so it would die off at the thirty-day mark without fail,” Nathan continued. “We retested, and it worked. We didn’t have a single animal breach in the second round. So we moved on to human trials.”

“But you knew the other particles had moved beyond their programming in the original trial,” Josie countered. “And you didn’t make a single adjustment?”

Nathan shook his head, his eyes turning red and puffy from crying.

“There wasn’t a reason!” He was whining now, defensive. “If the transmission ends, the nanites do too.”

“But that’s clearly not what happened.”

“I don’t know why,” Nathan answered her preemptively.

“If you had to guess?”

Gary could see he was weighing something in his mind, trying to decide if he was going to share everything he knew or not.

“Twenty minutes,” Reggie said, right on cue, and Nathan was jolted out of his reverie.

“I don’t really have to guess,” he finally answered. “I pulled a sample from one of the patients in the LA trials—”

“Argo did trials here as well?” Hammond cut in.

“Five months ago,” Nathan answered. “We ran a thirty-day controlled trial. The subjects lived onsite for the duration, and everything worked like a charm. The transmitter died, the particles went inactive . . . it was perfect.”

“But the samples?” Josie reminded him, steering him back on track.

“Right. I pulled samples from the patients and noticed that in a fairly large majority of them, the particles were . . . different. They looked different than they had when they were manufactured.”

“Which means?”

“I’m not sure.” Nathan was whining again, fat tears streaming down his face. He was beginning to shiver uncontrollably now, his teeth chattering as he spoke. “But what I told the board is, I think they were evolving—because they all had the same weird new piece on them. It took me a while to figure it out, but it looked like a modified section off the transmitter.”

“Oh, shit,” Josie whispered.

“What?” Gary was surprised at the sound of his own voice.

“Uh . . . well, if I understand him right, Nate is saying that the nanites were trying to incorporate transmitters onto each individual particle. It was something we considered originally, but it was too expensive and unnecessary. One transmitter was effective, and frankly, it was safer. Gave us more control,” Josie explained.

“But you said they all went inactive at the thirty-day mark.” Hammond pushed Nathan again.

“This wasn’t a thirty-day trial on Oahu,” Josie answered for him. “They had ninety days, and a new transmitter with each new dose.”

“Did you code each transmitter to its specific batch of particles?” Hammond asked.

Nathan nodded.

“We thought about not doing that. The nanites were coded to control serotonin levels in the brain by releasing very specific doses of the medication, and the promed to counter any overdose, so once they ran out of the medication at thirty days, they would just cycle through the motion, even if they were still active. But still, we wanted to make each transmission unique as another safeguard. But I think in the trial, the old particles adapted to the new signal; and instead of cycling, they went looking for new ways to control serotonin levels. Maybe that eventually led them to breach the programming again.”

Josie broke in. “And on top of that, you gave them ninety days to learn how to modify the transmitter. What you’re saying is, not only are they off code; they’re also self-sufficient.”

“I don’t know that.” Nathan was almost blubbering now. “And I tried to tell the board! I took the info I had, and I asked them to run a longer controlled trial before they ran the ninety-day outpatient, but they wanted word in the pipeline by Christmas, so they shot me down. I almost lost my job.”

This time, it was Josie who scoffed.

“I still don’t understand why they didn’t have
something
ready for this contingency,” Hammond mused.

Nathan looked up again, and Gary could see he was once again deliberating. A more violent convulsion shook his body, and he moaned, closing his eyes. And then he spoke up again.

“I didn’t say they didn’t have something ready.”

Everyone waited for him to continue. Through gritted teeth, he finally spoke again.

“Handing out a cure means that at some point, the company has to publicly acknowledge that something went wrong. It would kill the product, the technology; if the public’s first encounter with nanotechnology in medicine is negative, it’s going to take years and years of positive reinforcement to undo the damage. So they’re not going to allow that to happen.”

“They think this will resolve itself?” Josie asked.

Nathan shrugged, the movement partially obscured by the shivering that racked his frame. For a second, Gary could only pity the young man.

“No one can blame us if we were never there in the first place,” Nathan said quietly.

The silence in the room was suddenly palpable.

“What?” Josie asked quietly.

“One of the trial participants called the company a week ago, reporting some strange side effects. Three more calls the next day, and within twelve hours, they had the teams together and on their way to the island.”

“The blackout?”

Nathan nodded.

“So, they’ll destroy any evidence of the trial,” Josie finished for him.

“Wait—what?” Gary said loudly. “What about the people involved?”

For the first time, Nathan looked over at him. The young man’s eyes, swollen and bloodshot, reminded him of Brandon’s in the minutes before he had left him at the airport curb.

“My best guess is, they’re counting on them all dying. Or if they don’t . . . who is going to think of molecular computers in the bloodstream?”

The words fell on Gary’s shoulders like bricks, each one slamming him with the force of a physical blow.

“Someone will say something,” Gary whispered, but Nathan shook his head.

“There aren’t that many of us working on the project, and everyone has too much riding on this to speak up,” Nathan continued, his face screwing up as some new pain shuddered through his body. “Josie here was an anomaly.”

“Are you sure about this, Nate?” Josie’s voice was gentle again.

He paused for a long moment before responding.

“They came to me when they got the first call. Probably because I told them about it to begin with, but I stayed on anyways.” He chuckled.

“Always nice to have loyal employees,” Hammond scoffed.

“Guys?” Tab spoke up for the first time, and they turned to look at her. She was adjusting a computer monitor so the rest of the room could see it.

On the screen, they saw a reporter and the words “Atlanta, GA.” Tab turned the volume up, and they heard:

“—two hours ago. Friends say he was in town for a wedding, and when he arrived yesterday morning, he told them he thought he caught a bug on the plane. The young woman was moved to the hospital, where her condition steadily worsened, eventually ending in cardiac arrest. Police have reported that several other similar incidents have landed Atlanta residents in the hospital. Just one hour ago, we received the first report of a small group of people attacking two tourists, who were savagely beaten—”

“I just looked up the story online,” Tab cut in, muting the volume. “It started with this guy visiting from Oahu.”

“So it’s here,” Josie said, her voice flat. “We have to call the CDC.”

“And tell them what?” Hammond argued. “This isn’t a disease. It’s something entirely new, for which they are entirely unprepared.”

“Still, we have to start taking steps to warn people,” Josie retorted. “There was nothing we could do about Oahu; the island went dark too fast. But this—maybe we can slow this down.”

Her eyes were locked with Hammond’s, and for a moment Gary thought neither was going to budge. Finally Hammond shrugged his shoulders, and Josie walked swiftly out of the room.

Only seconds later, Nathan began to breathe heavily, and he wheezed that his chest was contracting.

“He’s going into arrest,” Reggie stated in a low voice.

“What?” Nathan shouted. “What did you say?”

But they didn’t answer him.

“Aren’t you going to do something?” Gary asked, a sense of horror at the scene before him seeping into his brain, slowing his reactions. The others in the room ignored him as well.

Nathan’s body seized grotesquely, spittle forming in the corners of his mouth as he worked his jaw, gasping for air.

“Cardiac arrest,” Reggie said.

“Shit,” Hammond growled. “Charge the defibrillator.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Reggie said, holding up a hand. “I still have brain activity. It’s changed, but still . . . activity means blood flow.”

“What are you saying?” Tab asked. “Our equipment is off?”

At that moment, Nathan’s body convulsed violently once again, and he let out a terrifying scream, his eyes screwed shut. When they opened, Gary could see that the strain had burst some of the blood vessels, and clouds of blood pooled around the young man’s irises.

Nathan fought the restraints viciously, metal clattering against metal as he threw his weight from side to side, working to free himself. As he moved, he began shouting nonsense at them and regurgitating a thin, watery vomit that dribbled down his chin and onto his shirt.

“Thirty-two minutes and fourteen seconds,” Reggie reported, tapping a button on the keyboard in front of him.

“That’s not much time,” Hammond answered.

Reggie shook his head.

“And that’s the very first evolution. It’s probably safe to assume as the particles evolve, the breach time will shorten,” he said.

They continued their discussion, tapping away at the keyboard and watching the monitors, but Gary was frozen in place, watching the man on the gurney dissolve into madness.

~

By the time they made it to the hospital, Jones was in the midst of a violent seizure, screaming in the back of the police cruiser they had taken from the back lot outside the station. He had been barely coherent at the time that they found the cruiser, but he had insisted that they load him into the backseat and lock him in.

“I meant what I said,” he had muttered as they helped him into the backseat. “I don’t want to die.” Then he had closed his eyes, shivering and retching as they pulled away from the building.

The sky was beginning to lighten enough that they could make out the surrounding neighborhood as they pulled out of the lot; down one of the streets to the north, a group of several people were standing in the darkness, motionless. The scene in the street immediately outside the station was like something out of a horror film; he counted three viciously mauled bodies lying in puddles of rainwater and blood. The muddy lawn was torn up in places where the struggles had taken place, bits of clothing and gore flecking the grass and sidewalk nearby. Still, he had been surprised that there were only three bodies visible.

They were only five minutes out from the station when Jones began moaning, fighting back louder cries of fear and pain. Kai felt the adrenaline in his system again; it was too much like driving Brandon to the hospital. Underneath the electric energy, he knew there was guilt and fear; nothing but Sarah’s message could have pulled him away from that hospital, he thought to himself.

But as he drove and Paul reassured his friend, Kai realized that only a few short hours ago, he could not have understood what was really going on around them. There had been no way to anticipate the events of the last sixteen hours or the way the world looked around him now. They passed several shops still smoldering where looters and rioters had lit fires, and as they neared the highway, he caught a glimpse of a group of teens in hoodies trotting down an alley, carrying bags of goods, their faces tense. Kai wondered if they were looting for pleasure or practicality.

The freeway had been nearly empty of other moving vehicles, but as he maneuvered through one wreck, a man came running from behind a car, shouting for help. He had blood on his forehead and shirt, and he was cradling his left arm.

“We can’t,” Kai said. He was not sure if he was telling the man, his brother, or himself.

In one of the moments when Jones seemed to have passed out in the back, Paul turned in his seat and watched the wrecks and jams of abandoned cars go by before whispering, “I can’t believe this.”

To get off the freeway at the right exit, Kai had to pull the cruiser off into the shoulder, muscling slowly past a flipped vehicle that blocked the entire lane. As they pulled out from behind the wreck, the bodies of two women lying on the road came into view, both battered and broken. They looked to have been thrown from the red sedan that lay on its hood behind them.

“Don’t look,” Kai told his brother, and pushed on toward their destination.

When they neared the hospital, Kai could see immediately how much the scene had changed. Military vehicles lined the road and the parking lot; chain-link fence had been erected around the perimeter, and inside stood several large, well-lit tents. Hundreds of people sat on the asphalt, nurses and Marines moving between the rows, handing out cups and speaking briefly when questioned.