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She followed the lighting. Turning to the left and then left once more. She passed rows of computer servers sitting on racks. Dim blue lighting illuminated the machines as fans hummed in the background. She stepped toward them and then bumped into a pane of clear glass she hadn’t seen. She touched the glass. It was cold, almost icy.
Looking down the line, the stacks of servers seemed to go on forever. “I’d hate to see your electric bill.”
She came to a stairway. It led downward. She descended the steps one by one until she arrived on what looked and felt like a circular stage.
Windows at the front of the room showed a sweeping view of a developed island and the shimmering bay out beyond. The buildings were geometrically precise, the common areas planted with manicured grass and mowed in perfect cross-hatching like the fairways of a golf course.
Only as her eyes adjusted to the light did she notice two men standing in the room. A tall, bone-white man whom she didn’t know, and the rat bastard that had taken them hostage, sent theIsabellato the bottom of the sea while they watched, and then drugged them into unconsciousness.
The rat bastard spoke first. “Good to see you up and walking, lass. I thought we’d overdosed you.”
“Go to hell,” she said.
“Been there,” he said dryly. “Not much to see.”
“Enough,” the pale man said. “You are Gamay Trout of NUMA, are you not?”
“You know I am.”
“Your husband,” the pale man continued. “He is Paul Trout, also of NUMA.”
“What are you guys, the Census Bureau?” she asked. “Yes, Paul is my husband. We both work with NUMA. You know all this. You stole our IDs, computers, and notebooks.”
The pale man continued the questioning without responding to her outburst. “You were called to the island of Reunion to investigate the stranded whales and other sea life.”
“Yep,” she replied. “And your man over there caused a riot and blew up our lab. Should I assume that was on your orders, Mr….”
“My name is Vaughn,” the ghostly looking man said. “And I’m not interested in what happened on Reunion. I need you to think about the days and weeks before that. You were in Africa, working on a different project. An attempt to use natural, biological methods to eradicate malaria.”
Gamay’s heart rate rose. She felt the hairs stand up on the back of her neck and the first twinge of what might be fear.Why would he be asking about that?she wondered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Your heart rate and physical responses suggest otherwise,” the computer voice announced. “Please be truthful.”
“There’s no need to deny what we already know,” Vaughn informed her. “We’ve hacked NUMA’s servers. We’ve read your reports.We know what you were working on. What we don’t have is the data you left out.”
Gamay found an edge creeping into her voice. “I didn’t leave anything out,” she insisted. “I’m very thorough.”
“You did indeed,” Vaughn countered. “Now tell us about the mosquitoes. What did you learn from them that put you in such a state of fear?”
Her heart rate jumped again.Pandora’s box.Paul had insisted it was closed and destroyed. But the information remained in one place: her mind. It was data she’d discovered and—after realizing its significance—erased and eradicated.How could these people know about it?
“Tell us,” Vaughn growled. “Or watch your husband die.”
He pointed toward the window, which revealed itself to be a high-definition screen instead of a pane of clear glass. As the screen darkened, an image appeared on it. Gamay saw Paul strapped to a hospital bed in a small operating room. His head was shaved and swabbed with reddish antiseptic. A spider-like machine was poised over him. Gamay recognized the machine as a robotic surgery system. She’d seen them in several hospitals.
“Before we put him under,” Vaughn said, “he was good enough to confirm that you had discovered something terrible in the mosquito study. A way to use the mosquitoes to spread any viral pathogen known to man. An astounding discovery, really. One that even nature has chosen to ignore. We know you tried to hide it by editing your early reports and filing incoherent data. And you’ve succeeded in keeping the most important truth from coming out, but the efforts were too late to hide the possibility of what you’d found.”
Gamay shrank back. She felt an overwhelming desire to flee. “This information will do you no good,” she said meekly. “It can only cause harm.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Vaughn said. “Now please explain the process to us. In what ways did you alter the mosquito DNA to result in such a perfect carrier?”
Gamay fluctuated between guilt and fear. Hit by a wave of anger, she lashed out. “You already have one plague spreading across the world in the locusts you’ve created. Isn’t that enough for you?”
“The God of the Bible didn’t limit Himself to just one,” Vaughn replied. “Why should I?”
Gamay struggled to think. Her mind could see no reason why anyone would be so interested in unleashing chaos on the world. Even the most ruthless dictators avoided using biological weapons for the simple reason that once they were unleashed they could not be controlled. They were doomsday weapons, the kind that circled back and destroyed those who’d created them. She held her tongue and stared blankly at her captors.