Page 31 of Shadow Boxed (Shadow Warriors #2)

Chapter twenty-five

Clark sat hunched over his desk, staring at the screen of his laptop.

Everything was back online. He was able access his entire system now, including the security system and all the recorded footage on the camera feeds.

And for the past twenty-four hours, minus a couple to eat and sleep, he’d watched Doctor Comfrey and her lab assistants progress from uninfected to infected.

The transition was easy to identify. They went from talking and moving, from tugging at the door handle or punching random letters, numbers, and symbols into the security panel, to silence, to paralysis, to staring.

Close to three hours after Comfrey’s last panicked call, the bots switched her brain off and shut her body down. No more moving, no more talking, no more trying to get out of the room. She, along with the other two women, just stood there in their huddle and stared at the door handle.

Yet they hadn’t turned violent like his original test subjects. They made no attempt to harm each other. Like the reanimated specimens, the newly infected just stood and stared. Somehow, the bots had reprogrammed themselves to bypass the violence of their original programming.

But why?

What purpose did this adaptation serve? What purpose did any of their recent actions serve?

Why reanimate their victims? If they sought mobile hosts so they could infect more people, this new programming was a poor choice.

The NNB26 prototype infected through contact, and what living person would get close enough to a shambling corpse to allow infection?

Of course, he was judging their behavior through his own experience and knowledge.

They were machines after all. They likely didn’t recognize the liabilities of their reanimated hosts yet. Sure, he’d programmed intelligence into his little prodigies, as well as the ability to learn and adapt, but there would be constant new lessons for them to learn. Maybe this was one of them.

Regardless of the purpose behind reanimating the dead—these twelve resurrected specimens, along with the newly infected lab workers, would never get the chance to pass on their nanobot load.

He’d changed the access code to the door as soon as the security panels came back online.

Their prison was secure. Impenetrable. Nobody was getting in. Nobody was getting out.

He'd made damn sure of that.

Suddenly, the reanimated specimens from Karaveht shuffled forward and joined the infected lab workers at the door.

The fact Comfrey and her staff didn’t react to the mangled corpses was absolute proof that the three women were infected.

Previously, they’d fled when one of the shambling specimens approached.

The whole lot of them stood there, pressed against each other, staring at...something.

Like they were waiting.

But for what?

He switched to camera three, which gave him a side view of the door. He leaned closer and recoiled in shock. They were staring at the door handle. Every one of them, reanimated and newly infected, were completely focused on the door handle, as though collectively willing it to open.

A chill crashed over him, turning his skin clammy. On instinct, he accessed the security program, his fingers hovering over the programming module for the specimen lab. Just as his fingers brushed the keyboard, the panel next to the door turned from red to green.

And Doctor Comfrey reached for the door handle.

Day 32 Aboard the Chinook, over the Pacific Ocean

“We don’t know if they’re infected. Not for sure.” Rawlings’s voice was tighter and harder than O’Neill had ever heard it, bleached of any good ol’ boy charm. “Can’t just kill the poor bastards without knowin’ if they’re tickin’ timebombs.”

“Yeah? What would you suggest?” Mackenzie snarled.

Shoving the fingers from both hands through his short hair, he spun in a frustrated circle.

When he stopped, he was facing Rawlings again.

“Their anchor isn’t long enough to hit bottom at this depth, so we have no way to hold them in place.

And we can’t sit here and babysit them forever.

We’ve been out here too damn long already.

Somebody is bound to see us.” He shook his head, frustration seething across his lean face.

“I don’t like it any better than you, but it’s clear those poor motherfuckers are infected.

The best thing we can do for them is to put them down.

A missile strike will accomplish that. And we have two of them on board for this exact situation. ”

“It’s too risky to leave them out here,” Cosky interjected. “This section of the ocean does get traffic. We’ve been damn lucky a ship hasn’t crossed our—hell, their—path already. It would be disastrous if someone got curious and hopped over to check the Harbinger out.”

O’Neill listened quietly, without taking part.

The argument had been raging for an hour, ever since Capland had tried to drop anchor, but it wouldn’t grab the ocean floor.

They’d taken a position close to the Harbinger, close enough Cap could remotely control the navigation and prevent it from drifting back toward shore, or into a traffic lane.

Sure, they’d accomplished their initial goal of navigating the Harbinger far from shore. But that success had opened another can of worms. Like what the fuck were they going to do with a ship potentially—hell, likely—full of infected people.

Rawlings shifted until he faced Winters. “What about you, skipper? How do you stand on this?”

From what O’Neill could tell, those on the chopper were split. Half agreed with a missile strike and half insisted there had to be another option. They just needed to find it.

Winters frowned, thought for a moment, and shook his head. “I’m not comfortable turning our missiles on an American ship, crewed by US citizens. Fuck, the men and women on that vessel are the very people we’ve sworn to protect. It’s time to report what’s going on to Hurley. Let him make the call.”

Mackenzie was already shaking his head…violently. “SOCOM won’t sink the ship. They’ll try to—” he used air quotes “— contain the vessel and the crew.”

Cosky nodded. “And without the proper equipment, everyone who rushes to the rescue will carry the plague back off the ship.”

“That’s not our call,” Rawls insisted tightly.

“Hell, ya’ll makin’ the assumption they’re infected.

We don’t know that. Not for sure. True, they’re actin’ hinky as hell, but they ain’t violent.

They ain’t killin’ each other.” He turned to Aiden.

“You have experience with these damn bugs. What’s your gut tellin’ you? Are they infected?”

Aiden shrugged. “They’re infected. I have no doubt about that. No idea why they haven’t turned violent. Maybe they still will. Maybe they’re having a delayed reaction. We believe there’s a bot bomb on board. It’s too much of a coincidence that they’re acting abnormally.”

O’Neill scrubbed his hand down his face. And there was the rub. While there was no question the Harbinger’s crew was behaving extraordinarily strange, there was no physical proof that a nanoweapon was on board.

The only confirmation they had that the weapon was on board had come from the elder gods. They had no physical proof to offer Hurley, or even his own former superiors at ODNI.

Shadow Mountain had undertaken this mission on faith alone.

On the hope that Aiden had connected with Benioko’s spirit in his dreams and that their former Taounaha had stepped in to guide them.

But there was no proof the information passed through Aiden was true.

They had nothing concrete to pass onto SOCOM or ODNI to convince them to act.

While Wolf’s warriors trusted the elder gods, and the intel’s source, nobody else would.

Plus, their mission plan had gone to hell. They’d expected to infiltrate the ship, secure the weapon, and escape back to the Zodiac. They hadn’t expected to sink the ship while there were still living on board.

They’d known, of course, that there was a chance the weapon had leaked on board.

But in that case, they’d expected the infected to kill each other.

They even had a contingency plan for that scenario.

Wolf had fitted the Chinook with a pair of AShM ballistic missiles.

It had been a bitch balancing the missile armaments with the ability to flood the cargo bay and launch the Zodiac.

But Shadow Mountain’s engineers were ingenious, and the Chinook had taken to the sky with both missiles on board, and the ability to flood the hold intact.

They could drop the Harbinger to the sea floor. They just hadn’t expected its crew to be alive when they did so.

Aiden turned and stared directly at O’Neill. “What do you think we should do with the ship?”

O’Neill tuned back in to the conversation to find everyone’s eyes—including Wolf’s—locked on him. He knew from eavesdropping on the Neealaho that all Shadow Mountain warriors unanimously agreed with sinking the Harbinger.

But then they were fully aware of where the information pertaining to this aggress had come from.

They trusted where the mouthpiece led. They were also aware of the Shadow Warrior’s apocalyptic prophecy.

And they were dedicated to making sure the peoples of Hokalita survived.

They knew if the ship was boarded, by anyone, the infection would spread, and the Wanatesa would come true.

“Me?” O’Neill hedged.

While he’d listened to the discussion through Neealaho, as well as the one raging around him, he hadn’t planned to express his opinion. Unless, it was meant to needle or obstruct, he never shared his opinion…at least not his true opinion. One of the benefits of being jie'van.

“Yes,” Wolf suddenly broke in. “What say you?”

Everyone stared at him, awaiting a response. Fuck, being on the inside was a pain in the ass. But he did have something to say…something no one else had considered…something that needed to be said.

“I don’t think we have a choice. We can’t afford to let anyone board that vessel.

We know something is happening over there, and it’s a safe bet it’s bot related, which means it’s infectious.

We can’t let it get out. Period. If it escapes the Harbinger, we’re looking at billions of deaths.

The loss of a couple dozen innocent lives verses billions is preferrable.

Nor will anything Faith creates to cloak the vessel help.

Not without the ability to anchor it. There’s too great a chance it will drift ashore. ”

Faith’s shield had been discussed prior to leaving Shadow Mountain, but she didn’t have one capable of stretching across ocean water. The salt molecules in sea water fucked with her prototype. Not that it mattered now. They couldn’t use her shield technology anyway.

“A long-winded vote to sink it.” Mackenzie pounced, looking satisfied. The satisfaction quickly shifted to annoyance, as though he didn’t want to be on the same side as O’Neill.

“It has to go down,” O’Neill agreed. He had no doubt about that. “The needs of the many—”

“Outweigh—” Cosky jumped in.

“The needs of the few.” Capland’s head popped from where he was hunched over his laptop in one of the chairs behind them.

“Fuck, they’re quoting Spock now.” Mackenzie sounded disgusted.

Rawlings scoffed. “I’d like to point out you knew immediately where the quote came from.”

“Only because it’s a cliché,” Mackenzie shot back.

“There is one thing we haven’t considered.” O’Neill ignored the byplay. “We don’t know whether sinking the ship will keep the bots from infecting more people.”

“Sure, we do,” Mackenzie drawled. “They’ll be dead. At the bottom of the ocean. In itty bitty pieces.”

Aiden picked up O’Neill’s meaning immediately.

“Judging by my old teammates who are…existing in an atmosphere with no oxygen, sending the Harbinger’s crew to the bottom of the ocean won’t ensure they can’t move around, wiggle their way to shore.

If they don’t need oxygen to exist, it won’t matter how long it takes them to reach shore. ”

Wolf frowned. “This is true.”

“They wouldn’t make it intact to shore,” Cosky pointed out. “Soon as they hit the bottom of the ocean, they’ll become a buffet for marine life. There won’t be anything left of them.”

“True.” O’Neill had already thought of that, but it brought no comfort—only deepening terror. “And what becomes of the bots then? Do they become part of the food chain?”

“Fuck.” Rawlings breathed. “If that’s the case, when the infected fish are eaten by people, the people could become infected too.”

“If you’re right,” Cosky’s face turned white, “we could be unleashing a mass contamination down the road.”

It was too bad they didn’t have a solid connection to the Shadow Warrior, outside of Aiden’s dreams. They needed guidance.

O’Neill looked at Aiden and raised his eyebrows. “Any chance you can settle in for a nap and connect with Benioko? Might be our best shot at finding out whether sinking this ship would usher in the exact scenario we’re trying to prevent.”